


Blorcyn's Drafts

by Blorcyn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Parahumans Series - Wildbow, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen, furthermost reaches
Genre: Alt-Power Taylor Hebert, Alternate History, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Historical, Everyone's a trump, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Orphans, Prosopagnosia, Snippets, massive AU HP, miscellaneous snippets, multiple fandoms but not all crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29683371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blorcyn/pseuds/Blorcyn
Summary: This is a collection of multi-chapter snippets for all my works unless they become long enough to need their own thread.HP/ Worm / P&P / CYOA
Kudos: 2





	1. [HP] Hogwarts College School: Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Potter lives here in the same universe as A World Without Secrecy, where Hogwarts was established in London and the Statute of Secrecy was never brought into being.   
> A young boy, homeschooled, he discovers his magic and embarks on an adventure to London, where he will be schooled. 
> 
> For the alt history, follow this link, and clink on the spoiler.   
> https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/draughty-drafts-semi-snip-thread.919206/#post-74158692

Harry Potter and London Hogwarts School  
-  
Chapter 1:  
\--------  
Harry was an urchin with little to urch. A pauper destitute of paup. He was fast of hand, and mischievous. He could cause distractions and filch and shake his head sadly, with two cake-crumb covered hands behind his back, bold as you pleased. In the main house, he knew which stairs creaked, and at night its corridors and kitchens belonged to him. Over the course of his life, he had catalogued every shadow and found the two window panes that could be displaced when the common, obstinate doors were shut fast.

Something was lacking though, thieving from Wychwood House. Especially on the weekends without Tutor. Every Oliver needed a Fagin, for it to feel like a proper triumph. Without Tutor, it was, unfortunately, less artful dodge and more playing pretend: as technically the whole manor belonged to him.

Still, the Dursleys made an effort where time allowed. In a grand, empty house it was better than nothing.

The Dursleys were the family that lived in Harry’s house. They weren’t exactly his family, they were keen to point out. His last name was Potter and his mother had once been Petunia Dursley’s sister. They hadn’t been particularly close. Petunia Dursley had married Vernon Dursley and they had had a son who was five weeks older than him.

Dudley impressed on him that this was a very significant amount of time to be older than someone but Harry rather thought it was the fact that he was five stone heavier than him instead.

There had been a time that Harry had gone to school with Dudley and, despite having to see Dudley most of every day, it had been a bit better than staying at home alone all day. He had felt a sense of belonging at Hatherop Castle. ‘The Potters have attended Hatherop Castle since its founding’, he had been told, and this impressed the other children. Although, not quite so much as his being an orphan. Dudley had told the school that Harry’s parents were murdered, and this was of extreme interest to the class and Harry, too.

Harry had turned this titbit into his tale of choice. His parents had been murdered a hundred times in a hundred ways, saving him from a hundred different enemies and natural disasters. It was an enormous pleasure telling the story, and enormously popular. He was the envy of the year.

Frequent birthday party invitations were his downfall. The Dursleys had removed him from school at the end of his first year.

At age six he had been incarcerated in Shipton-under-Wychwood, and there he had languished ever since. With no company except them as lived in the books of the library.

It was half-past three in the after-midnight and so Harry was there, in the library. He knew vanishingly little about the Potters, but such as he did came from that room.

It was a grand old place. The chairs were squeaky, leather, and green with arms that came up to almost his shoulders. Bookshelves reached to the ceiling and lined all the walls, and there were more walls than you might expect.

When he was younger he’d tried to figure out how they could all fit in. He'd wandered around the outside of Wychwood House and tried to see how so many windows could turn so many corners and still see outside. He hadn’t managed it but the mystery added to the library’s charm.

The best thing about the library after all the books was that its floor was a thick, shag carpet. After-hours Harry could wander about without his socks on, with no fear of being shrieked at. Padding over the carpet and feeling the library through his toes made it special. Sitting in the chair the Potters had once used and seeing the chips in bookshelves and the scratches on desks made his real family all seem a little less imaginary.

But that wasn’t the best thing about Harry’s library. Outside, in the House—where Aunt Petunia shrieked, and Dudley chased and Uncle Vernon scowled—he had to be light, and fleet and cheeky in word and smile and deed. In the library, he didn’t have to be anything at all. In his retreat he didn’t have to be inside Wychwood House at all.

Harry was half-way through Moby Dick. It was an old book, without pictures on the front, or even a slip at all, but that made it feel all the nicer to hold. An old book felt sometimes more like a proper book, he thought.

He crossed to the shelf and plucked it from his reading shelf, and settled in the chair with the loud rasp of old well-worn leather. The library was one floor up and half a house over from any of the bedrooms, he didn’t have much to worry about from noise.

Light was the enemy. There was only one switch for the whole room's anbaric bulbs. When he turned it on all the windows shone, and they shone directly towards Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon’s bedroom. Uncle Vernon’s small bladder had been Harry's undoing on several occasions.

The solution was candles. Lots of candles. He stole them from the store and hid them in the library. Once stuck to a saucer they were serviceable for reading and in his nook there was little light that would reach the far windows. And, of course, his trick made candles easy to light.

Harry settled and placed the saucer and candle on the desk besides him. He licked his fingers and then pinched them to the wick. He took his fingers away and a flame bloomed, before guttering down to a more regular size.

It made sense to Harry that if licking your fingers and pinching a flame put a flame out then it should put it back again, later. More lessons with Tutor had shown him that was not a strictly reasonable expectation. Harry suspected he was a wizard, like Captain Ahab, or Mr. Darcy. They were always doing strange and odd things and, with the benefit of hindsight, so was he.

He should’ve liked being a wizard had he suspected that it would’ve made his life any easier. With the Dursleys, he did not suspect that. He did not suspect that at all.

Uncle Vernon worked on the County Council. He encountered a steady number of wizards amongst his duties and he despised each one, Uncle Vernon even worked for a goblin and he never had a kind word for him. As Uncle Vernon often despised Harry with little provocation at all, this did not seem a good omen.

Still, after-midnight, in his retreat, was not the time to be thinking of the Dursleys. He was here for the ocean, for whale-hunting and adventures with magic.

On the second page of the logistics of whale-bounty prize-divvying, he fell asleep.

\-----

Harry was in the sky. The sun was shining on his face and it was warm.

He was older. He knew. An adult grown. He was dressed all in black, and tall and strong, except he was also still a little boy in that simultaneous way that dreams often did things.

There was a boat below him, and miles of open ocean, and in the west a great coastline. It was far away, but he could see it all perfectly anyway. He could see cowboys and Indians shooting at each other with blunderbusses. He could see Washington in red, riding a great horse up and down a beach.

In Harry’s hand was a wand and when he waved it things happened. He pointed it at the ocean and it turned to waves and storm, then calm and flat. He pointed it at the ship and although it looked the same to him, now he knew it was tiny and he could reach out and pluck it up and hold it in the palm of his hand.

The sun was boiling on his face. It was mid-summer and hot. He pointed his wand at the sun and tried to dim it, to make it cool and soothing. But his cheek was blistering.

He pushed harder. Cold. Ice. Frost. Winter. For a moment, it seemed like he might win, but the heat returned, hotter and hotter. So hot it burned.

\----

"Oh no." He was going to be in so much trouble.

The fire had covered everything except his reading nook. Beyond the nearest bookshelf, all the way to the library door, fire crackled and roared. Its teeth worried all the books like a Jack Russell terrier would a rat, and scratched up the carpet too.

For now, the fire was content to ignore him. His desk and his chair were the borders that it seemed not to wish to pass, but it and its smoke were not in agreement.

Thick, black and heavy, smoke was sinking down from the ceiling where it tumbled and roiled. It set him to coughing. It was hot to breathe, like the worst colds, where every breath through your nose made you feel like a dragon.

Stooping, Harry stumbled over to the only safe window, away from the heat. It was latched and locked. The key was near the doorway into the library.

"Sorry, library," said Harry. The window was made up of little rectangular panes separated by thin veins of wood. He pushed one pane quite firmly and when it didn't move he made to punch it. It hurt his hand. For a brief moment, he felt something other than the terrible heat of the fire, but that was it. "Ow, ow, ow."

The chair was too heavy and hot to lift, so Harry threw a hard book at the window but it just bounced off. He kicked at the pane but that was no use and the smoke was now running its fingers through the crown of his hair.

He pulled a drawer from the unburning desk. It was thick and heavy, old English oak. He threw all of his 10 year old weight into his shoulder and drove the drawer into the window. The force caught him full in the chest and he was thrown back onto the floor. The drawer hit him the nose, too, before dancing off into the fire, spiteful at his mistreatment.

Harry coughed on the floor and looked up at the carpet of smoke level with the windowsill. The heat was going to kill him. Glass was strong, far stronger than it ought to be.

He scrambled onto all fours and crawled to the walls furthest from the border of the fire. Maybe there was a secret door or trapdoor. Who knew how long this magic circle of fireless floor would hold. But that was it. It was a magic circle. He remembered now, how, in his dream, he'd tried to magic the sun cold—and made some progress, too. It was too bad he'd not dreamt of fighting off smoke.

He started with the second to bottom shelf, the highest one he could reach and keep his eyes open and his breathing free of coughs and splutters. He pulled out the books as quickly as he could, but nothing was happening.

He moved onto the next shelf, but there was still nothing. There was no secret door that he could reach. That he'd ever found in his entire life. And he couldn't even break through a window. He was going to die in his library, because of his scrawny arms.

His hideout, his retreat. His Pequod. He'd be like a captain going down with his ship. If the captain had caused his ship to sink by his own carelessness. Harry wished he had finished Moby Dick, if he was to die tonight. Something like this would never have happened to Captain Ahab. His magic would be strong enough to put out a bonfire, not just light a candle.

Harry coughed. He screwed his eyes up tight, but they burned even without the smoke. Goodbye cruel world, he thought. Goodbye, Dursleys. Goodbye, Tutor. They'd all realise that they'd never treated him as good as they ought to have, and his funeral would be full of people crying for him and then they'd be arrested because they hadn't saved him or used more thin glass in the windows. Wizards would come, and they'd all light candles with their fingertips and put them out when they lowered him into his grave.

Candles!

The candles, that was it. It had always seemed obvious to Harry that if you could put a candle out by pinching it with your fingers than you ought to be able to put it back again later by the same method. It seemed equally obvious in that moment that if you could pinch out a candle flame then you ought to be able to pinch out any flame at all. After all, he'd been able to stop the flames from growing even in his sleep and he wasn't asleep any more.

Harry butted his crown against the lip of the lowest book-shelf to make sure he was facing the wrong way then he spun on his belly, like a worm, to point straight towards the door, and the fire. He kicked his way forward and shimmied and paddled until he had swum to the edge of his safe-harbour.

He quickly licked his index finger and thumb—though his tongue now rasped like a cat's and his throat was a desert dune at midday—and pinched the nearest stem of flame.

It didn't go out all at once. It bucked and kicked like a mule and his finger began to burn. It got hotter and whiter until he couldn't help himself and he let go with a gasp. But ahead of him, halfway to the door was a corridor free of flame and, for a moment, smoke.

He ran to the new edge of the flame. It was brighter here, all yellows and white, and it dodged him, weaving back and forth to avoid his other hand. With his left hand, he caught a chubbier trailing arm and held on for as long as he could. This time he got what he needed. Although he was screaming, by the end, to hold on. The corridor of flamelessness extended to the door.

He had four pink shiny finger-pulps as a reward. In fact, his left thumb had gone white in the middle, though at least that part was painless. He ran to the door, half-crouched, as the smoke descended. The carpet underneath his feet was no longer luxurious. Crispy, burnt and crunching underneath his bare feet, at least it was not hot.

The doorknob was though. Touching it caused his hand to jump back by itself like he had accidentally seized a hot pan. He solved this with his sodden pyjama top. He took it off and wrapped it around the handle until he could turn it with both palms.

And then he was outside the library and the cooler air filled his lungs, and it was sweeter than apple crumble or cake.

The library door opened onto a corridor that turned left and right. To Harry's right, shortly ahead, were the stone balustrades and bannisters of the central stairs leading down to the entry hall. To the left lay the longer portion of the hallway, to the apartments.

The fire had eaten into that part. It was merrily peeling the paint away from the walls and warping the vaulting of the ceiling.

The Dursleys were that way. Asleep in their beds.

The fire crept forward and back. Climbing over the library door frame towards him and pushing back towards the bedrooms. It had reached the opposite wall, even, so that there was now an arch of flame.

The heat was scorching hot, scorching his front and back where he'd taken his top off, and the top of his feet was starting to smart. Even the wood underneath his soles felt warm now.

His fingers were burnt and he didn't want to pinch any more fire. Not when he didn't have to. And the right thing to do was always to call the fire-brigade. He would call the fire-brigade and they would come and put out the fire and save the Dursleys. He didn't want to burn himself any more.

Harry turned and ran to the stairs. His feet slap-slapped on the stone as he flew down to the entry hall. In the vestibule, there was a telecommuter on which he could call the firemen.

The grand door wasn't locked, and to the side of the vestibule was the commuter. It was a square box, about as wide as his chest, and perhaps half as tall and deep. Atop it the sparkwire plug extended out, curving over the edge to point back towards the ground, and above that sat the receiver atop its hook.

He lifted it up and placed it to his ear. Quickly he span 999 into the receiver. one long tone kept beeping, but there was no ringing.

Over the past year, Dudley had been using the telecommuter to visit friends or invite them over even when it was late in the evening, or when he hadn't told Aunt Petunia where he was going. It had caused a lot of tension between Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia who normally gave Dudley whatever he wanted but, eventually, Aunt Petunia's tutting had gotten the best of Uncle Vernon and they had done something to restrict access to the commuter network. Harry had no-one to call and few places to go that he would not rather walk. He hadn't realised that restricting commuter usage had just meant disconnecting all the telecommuters!

Besides the table with the visitor's book, and the anbaric lamp, was a drawer that held the front door's iron key. Harry fished it out and opened the front door, letting the cold air and the moonlight spill in as he rushed out.

On the lawn, he turned back to see the fire raging. Almost a third of the upper floors were engulfed by now. Tongues of fire licked through some of the windows and some were poking their head up out of the roof. It was bright, the light from the fire danced on the lawn and showed up the shape of the Wychwood that bordered the house. Despite the fact it was the middle of the night, he could see the shape of the path all the way through the park to the gate. This fire must be visible from miles away. Perhaps the fire-brigade were already on their way.

In the cold Harry was both sweating and starting to shiver. The grass had dew on it, and his previously hot feet were now chilled. But if he stepped onto the gravel of the drive it hurt to walk.

What to do?

The fire crackled merrily and grew and grew.

If Harry ran, all the way down the path, along the roadside and into Shipton-under-Wychwood, he might be able to knock on the village houses and wake someone up. He might be there in almost ten minutes if he really, really ran.

In almost ten minutes, almost half the house had gone up in flame.

He shivered. He desperately did not want to go back in. Desperately. He had to go back in.

He traced the edge of the house, away from the fire until he was at the door at the back of the kitchen. His favourite window was high up on the wall and led directly into the pantry. He popped the pane out and slid through, tumbling onto the tiled floor. He was into the kitchen and then into the breakfast room and near the small stairs that led from that part up into the apartments.

Dudley's room was closest to the kitchen. Harry knocked by habit and burst in, all at once. Harry's cousin Dudley was a great big lump [racing car bed]. Twice as wide as he was tall, with a great round moon-face and beady blue eyes under a bowl of straw-blonde hair. All that fat must have blocked his ears, lying down, because he didn't even move as Harry barged in.

Harry ran over to the bed. Started to shake Dudley.

"Dudley, Dudley," he cried, "wake up!"

Dudley woke up violently. He gave Harry a strong shove and Harry stumbled backwards. A great spike of pain shot up from his foot and fell. He had stood on something spikey on Dudley's messy floor. This was an insult too far for Harry and he couldn't help a few small tears from leaking out.

"What you doing? Why did you--? I'll give you something to cry for. I'll show you." Dudley jumped out of his bed, over the headlights and drew his fist back.

"Du-dudley. Don't."

"I will," he said.

"The ho-house is on fire, Dudley." Harry reached down to his foot and drew out a small shard of plastic. It was coloured yellow and had come from a small McDonald's race-car that he had stood on. Well, yellow and a little bit red, now.

"The what's on fire?" asked Dudley. Harry did his best to answer but it was taking all his sniffing power just to keep afloat. Dudley looked at him then, half-dressed and smelling of smoke. He clicked on his lamp-clock and saw the time. "You're not playing, are you?"

Harry shook his head.

"You were going to leave my mum and dad!" he shouted. He pushed Harry to the floor and ran over him to the door, clambering to the stairs before Harry could make it to his feet again.

"I wasn't!" shouted Harry and chased after. They climbed the stairs together, past Harry's room to the third floor proper, where the corridor from the library would turn and join the corridor from the apartments. The double doors of the master bedroom were separated by scant meters from the fire now. Smoke had filled the whole hallway and the heat blistered, so that they could barely keep their eyes open.

“It’s too hot!” said Dudley, as they tried to get to the door.

Harry turned to the fire. He reached out with burnt fingertips, but the heat spread far beyond the flames and he couldn’t push his hand through. Couldn’t reach the fire itself.

“Use your top, Dudley. On the handle!”

Dudley was obviously very much still half-asleep because he listened, and he used the sleeve of his pyjama handle on the hot brass door handle. They both jumped through, slamming the door shut behind them.

“Mum! Dad!” cried Dudley.

“Huh, whyfsigujat—” They were quickly roused. Aunt Petunia flicked on her bedside lamp. She was in her rollers with a pink eye-mask over her forehead.

“What are you doing! Dudley, what’s the matter? You, where is your top!”

Uncle Vernon was awake. Uncle Vernon was Dudley in massive-iature. It was a wonder that both he and Aunt Petunia could even fit in a four-poster bed. He had a darker shade of hair than Dudley, but his face was a potato and a moustache covered his top lip. He also sometimes wore a bowler hat. But he was not playful. He could go from confused to red in the face in 3 seconds flat, a skill borne out of long practice.

“What the ruddy hell are you up to, crashing into here!”

“There’s a fire, Uncle Vernon!”

“A fire?”

He struggled to his feet. “Where’s the fire? Where’s the fire?” Dudley and Harry were shouting over each other, at a pitch he evidently couldn’t understand. He grabbed the door handle, held it for a second.

“Alrigh—ahhhh.” He pulled his hand back to his chest. Blowing on it and bending over it. “Ruddy hell. Ruddy, ruddy Christ.”

Light was starting to creep underneath the gap where the door met the floor. Smoke, too. Small tendrils found purchase and then rose up, more and more smoke with the passing seconds.

“Vernon, there’s smoke coming under the door!” cried Aunt Petunia.

“Alright, stay calm everyone, I’ll sort this out. Now what did you do, Brat? Where’s this fire come from?”

“I don’t know,” said Harry.

“Harry woke me, Dad,” said Dudley, “he was trying to escape without waking anyone!”

“That’s a lie! I woke you up,” said Harry.

“I’ll deal with you later,” promised Uncle Vernon, “come on, now.” Uncle Vernon began pulling the sheets from the bed.

“Vernon!” said Aunt Petunia.

Uncle Vernon stormed to the room’s main window. He threw it open and then started to cord the blankets. “Help me tie these together, son. Use those Cubs knots.”

“I am not jumping out the window in my nighty!” said Aunt Petunia.

“Petuny,” said Vernon. And then they proceeded to have an argument by eye-movements and pursed lips.

Dudley dived on the sheets, regardless. Tying corners to corners quickly and loosely. Harry looked at him, at Uncle Vernon and the thin satin of the summer bed sheets. For that matter, the bedpost itself was no tree-trunk.

“How will you and Dudley get down, Uncle Vernon?” asked Harry, interrupting them all.

Dudley turned to look at him, evidently confused. Harry mimed a big stomach.

“Listen here, you,” said Uncle Vernon.

“I thought you had a commuter in here? Can’t you call the fire brigade and get us out?” asked Harry.

Aunt Petunia’s face took on the cast of a Duchess asked to change a nappy. “We most certainly do not. We don’t want anyone trooping in and out of our bedroom at any time of night. Ridiculous!”

Harry looked at them incredulously. “So we can’t get out?” he asked.  
“Yes we will!” said Uncle Vernon. He tied a flimsy cotton blanket to the foot of the bed. Then he took the knotted blankets and through them out the window in a big ball. “Dudley, you first.”

Dudley put his hands on the window ledge, tilted his head through. He looked distinctly queasy on pulling himself back in.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Of course you can,” said Uncle Vernon.

“It doesn’t even reach the ground, dad,” said Dudley.

Uncle Vernon came to join him, he leaned out through the window. “Well, it’s climb down. Or jump,” he said.

“Oh, Vernon!” said Aunt Petunia.

Harry looked out the window then back at the door. A hot light was shimmying back and forth under the door, sometimes even a darting tongue of flame. His fingers hurt, but he could magic them safe. If he could grab a flame. And, the flames must be right next to the door now.

“I can save us.” Harry’s voice was a little shaky. This was his secret, after all, his hope of escape in more ways than one.

He wasn’t even heard. “I can save us!” he shouted. The Dursley boys turned to face him but it was Aunt Petunia who responded.

“How?” she asked. She had stood to join her family, but she hadn’t edged any closer to the window. The decorative eyelashes on her eye mask stared straight ahead, but her own eyes kept darting to the smoke pouring beneath the door.

That was enough for Harry. He’d rather show them than tell them. He marched to the door and crouched near the door waiting for a little lick of flame. But they were too fast, he couldn’t grab them.

“What are you doing?” said Dudley. He had edged a little further from the window. Uncle Vernon was giving the bed-sheet rope a little tug. When he pulled, the bed slid a little along the floor.

“Come on, then, Petunia. You, what are you doing there? Come away from the door, boy.” Uncle Vernon saw Harry plucking at the frame. “Stop what you’re doing, boy. You can climb down this rope.”

“That rope’s a death trap,” snapped Harry.  
Vernon stomped over in his duck-egg blue pyjamas and grabbed Harry’s arm painfully, pulling him back from the door.

“Get here!”

“Let go of me!” said Harry.

“I won’t. You can make yourself useful for once. Stop being so wilful. Climb down that rope.” Vernon pushed Harry at the window and he almost went through.

“I can stop the fire. I can magic it away. I’m a wizard and you shouldn’t push me!”

“You may be a wizard, but you’ve no wand, no schooling. Without that you’re no more magic than my big toe. Now, make yourself useful.”

“No!” said Harry, “this is stupid. I can get us downstairs. I just need to open the door.” The blankets would be ideal. Harry started to pull the rope back in through the window.  
"Drop that rope right now!" thundered Uncle Vernon.

"No!"

"Drop it!"

Harry tore one particularly poor tied blanket from the chain and pulled it free. He managed to dodge Dudley's half-hearted grab but Uncle Vernon stepped in front of him, arms wide.

Harry made to duck left then juked right, aiming to flit under Vernon's wide open legs. Uncle Vernon closed them like a scissor and caught him tight.

"Not one more move, boy. You're not opening that door."

"I am a wizard!" said Harry. "I have magic and I can save us! I'm not jumping out that window!"

"Stop it! Both of you!" Aunt Petunia's shrill voice cut through them. Harry stopped his attempts to wriggle out from between Vernon's tree-trunk legs.

"Of course you're a wizard. Just like my perfect sister was a witch and your snobby father was a wizard! But you're a boy, a stupid boy. If you open that door the flames will fill this room in a second and you'll kill us all. For once in your life, Harry, think! Don't just do whatever stupid, thoughtless, little mischief appears in your head because you think you're better than everyone around you. Think and don't get yourself blown up like your mother and waste all the time and effort that Vernon and I have put into you to raise you at least half-right.

"Magic won't save you when you need it to. Witches die just like everyone else." Aunt Petunia was white in the face, breathing through her nose furiously. "Come on, Dudders. Lets tie these knots properly and get you out of here."

This was perhaps the most advice that Aunt Petunia had ever given to him and it left him flopping like a fish. She never talked about his mother. Vernon let him flop free, and he knelt with his son and his wife. The three of them re-tying the blankets quickly, re-securing them to the thick pipes that inserted into the base of their radiator.

Harry stood silently and watched them work. Frank flames were beginning to kindle in the bottom of the door-frame but he didn't step any closer to them.

The Dursleys launched their escape-rope through the window again. With the addition of some industrial-strength Uncle Vernon trousers, it reached much closer to the ground than before.

"Come-on, up you get Petuny," said Uncle Vernon.

"Dudley, you first," said Aunt Petunia.

Dudley tugged on the line and then clambered gingerly over the windowsill. Aunt Petunia followed him.

"Come on boy, get to it," said Uncle Vernon to Harry.

Harry looked over the edge. Dudley was swinging, twisting on himself, just a little bit above the ground, while Aunt Petunia was climbing downwards with tiny steps. The line looked perilously taught. Harry's stomach turned over in loops.

He took one hand and placed it on the rope and then turned so that his tummy was on the window sill and his legs out in the air. Uncle Vernon had one meaty hand underneath his armpit.

"Quickly, now." Uncle Vernon was looking at the door.

Harry placed his feet against the brick and held the rope and then he was stood side-ways up against the house. His head looking straight up towards the stars. From here, he could see great volumes of thick black smoke blotting out a great section of the sky.

Strangely, that great bonfire light that moved and danced and shone, last time he had been outside, wasn't visible from here. In fact, turning to look at the lawn, there didn't seem to be any light spilling out there either.

He took steps down towards the ground as quickly as he could. He wanted to be as low to the ground as possible when Vernon joined them.

Dudley and Petunia were on the ground when Uncle Vernon clambered on to the rope. His weight whipped the blankets like sails in a hurricane. His bottom filled Harry's whole view of the sky, and he was more afraid than he had been, at any point, dealing with the fire in the library.

Harry was just below the window of the second floor, and he quite some way to go. He did his best to take a step downward, but it was all he could do to hold on.

There came, then, the distinct sound of fabric ripping. Looking up it wasn't the seat of Uncle Vernon's pyjamas.

"Quickly!" shouted up Aunt Petunia and Dudley.

He did his best to oblige, but it was only a few seconds longer before there was a more decisive sound of ripping and then for a split-second---where nothing moved---there was a sudden looseness in the rope. The complete absence of tension.

"Oh bugge---" said Uncle Vernon.

His heart dropped slower than rest of him, it felt. Then the wind was soaring past and the house was growing faster than Jack's beanstalk. The gabled roof climbed straight up and away.

And then suddenly it stopped. He landed on his feet and nothing was disturbed or broken. He neither bounced nor crashed. And what's more, neither did Uncle Vernon. They were stood on the grass, looking at each other in amazement. Vernon touched his pyjamas gingerly.

"Boy?" he whispered.

"Hullo!" came a voice from up above. Aunt Petunia and Dudley were looking straight towards the window they had all just exited.

There was an old man with a great white beard, and silvery hair. At this distance, he was otherwise an indistinct figure, except for a bright conical hat that extended out from his head.

"Petunia, Vernon," he called, "I saw the fire and thought I might render some assistance. I see you have been rather creative and I was, in fact, late to the party. The building is quite cool, now, but perhaps a little unsafe still. I will come to you. Hold there." Then his head popped back in the window and he was gone.

"Who was that, Dad?" asked Dudley.

Uncle Vernon had turned a shade that more resembled the moon than his usual complexion. He turned to his son, finger out. "Best behaviour Dudley. You too, Harry. Don't speak unless spoken to."

"Who is he though, Dad?" asked Dudley again.

"That's Professor Dumbledore," said Aunt Petunia.

Professor Dumbledore! The greatest wizard alive. In their house. Harry had vanishingly little interest in newspapers and politics but it was a rare day that would see a front page without Dumbledore's name somewhere on it. Professor Dumbledore was a war hero of the World War, and, he was the Headmaster of Hogwarts school of magic. The biggest and best magic school in the world. Why would he have been in Shipton-under-Wychwood, to even have spotted the fire?

They were awful lucky that he was, thought Harry.

It didn't take long before he appeared, turning the corner of Wychwood House. He strode towards them, devouring the lawn under long steps.

Up close, he was very tall, and skinny. He wore traditional wizardly robes, the sort that didn't need to have a jumper or trousers beneath them. They robes were a range of deep confluent purples and blue, and they were covered in small designs of stars and planets that shone a faint silver, just the same as those on his hat.

"I am sorry that we should meet again, after so long, in circumstances like these. I am just grateful that I could be of some small use. Do we know how the fire started?" asked Dumbledore.

He looked over half-moon spectacles at them all. At Harry he seemed to look particularly closely and when Harry met his eyes he thought that Dumbledore should look right through him. But then Dumbledore smiled, a well-worn smile, and he seemed entirely human again.

"No," said Uncle Vernon. It was perhaps the only time in Harry's life that he heard him say less than he needed to.

"Curious," said Dumbledore. At that moment Dudley gave out a great shiver. "Forgive me," said Dumbledore, "may I offer you a warming charm?"

"Yes, please!" said Harry.

Quicker than the eye could track, a wand appeared in Dumbledore's hand. A long, slender thing, with a fixed handle at one end. He traced a circle with it encompassing them all, and as he completed the circle a strange light cast their face in a striking light that made them all look very strange: it was an actinic colour he didn't think he'd ever seen before.

The relief was immediate. As if he'd been sat in front of a hearth for the perfect amount of time. Dudley stopped shivering in almost the same moment, and even Aunt Petunia's arms seemed to be crossed a little less tightly.

"I have called for the Witney Fire-service, of course. I doubt that they should be long but I will remain until they arrive in case whatever first caused the fire should appear again. Of course, I have not even asked your names," he said this last part towards Harry and his cousin. The wand had disappeared again, Harry noted.

"I would guess," said Dumbledore, "that you are Master Dudley Dursley, and yourself Master Harry Potter." As he said the latter he pointed directly at Dudley.

"I'm Harry Potter," said Harry.

Dumbledore looked at him again, directly through his gold-rimmed spectacles. "Yes. You are rather the spitting image of James, your father. I should have gone with my gut, as they say. Well, we all make mistakes on occasion and there is no harm in admitting that.

"Vernon, Petunia," said Dumbledore, "may I have a moment with Master Potter, while we wait?"

Vernon jerked his head sharply in agreement. Dumbledore gestured at Harry with one hand, and turned towards the second nearest path. The one that turned at the greenhouses to come back to the main drive, rather than the nearest one which led right into the trees of the park.

They were quite some distance before Dumbledore spoke again. With Dumbledore's long steps he was a pace ahead of Harry and it meant his face was a little shadowed.

"Harry, would you happen to know how the fire started?" asked Dumbledore.

Harry's palms were immediately prickly. He considered saying that he didn't know but how could he? Dumbledore would never believe him.

"I'm sorry. It was an accident!" said Harry. Dumbledore said nothing in reply. "I didn't mean to. I tried to put it out."

"How?" asked Dumbledore.

Harry told him the whole sorry story. Of the stolen candles, the books and his hidden nook in the library. How much he loved the library and how sorry he was to have fallen asleep with the candle lit. How he had figured out how to pinch the fire dead, but that it had burned his hands terribly and he couldn't manage the whole blaze.

"Let me see your hands," said Dumbledore.

Harry showed them to him. Dumbledore examined them, turning them this way and that under his own long, cool fingers. He pinched them for a moment and Harry hissed, but when Dumbledore took his hand away his fingers were back to normal. Pink and painless and completely ordinary.

"Thank you," said Harry quietly.

Dumbledore stood up tall, again. Under the moon Dumbledore's features were carved shale, looking down at him from a great height.

"Magic can be a dangerous tool in the wrong hands. Not just to yourself but to others. You could have killed yourself tonight, Harry, and the Dursleys."

Harry looked at his feet again. He wanted to say that he was sorry again but the words were stuck in his throat. If he tried to let them out, he worried he would give out a sob instead. Certainly, his eyes were prickling.

"However, we all make mistakes. The important thing is that we learn from them. Am I understood?"

Harry nodded.

"I have something for you, Harry."

Harry looked up again, then. Dumbledore was holding an envelope and he gave it Harry. It was hefty, and deceptively weighty in the hand, and it felt like no paper he'd ever felt before. Thick and coarse.

"What is it?" asked Harry.

"You require an education, Harry, if we are to avoid any further most unfortunate incidents, and you clearly have promise. Happily, I know of a most excellent school of magic and I am in a position to offer its services to you."

Harry jumped and cheered. A place at Hogwarts!

"I wish you every luck in the sorting examination, you shall have to study very quickly," said Dumbledore.

"Pardon?" asked Harry.  
\-----------------------


	2. [Worm] Proof of Concept 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor ends up in the slammer after a disaster on her first alt!power night out, without really understanding her power or what happened. She starts her adventure in this chapter, escaping the juvenile detention center.

**1.1**

  
*

  
Sophia would have done well in prison. She would have _fit_.  
  
I wasn’t quite as well suited. And maybe I _had_ done worse but even now, a month on, I feel like she’s the one who _deserved_ to be here.  
  
A knock comes at my door again. On the other hand, I can’t imagine there’s too many members of the public who would agree with me on that.  
  
“Hebert? You awake?” A male voice, old and deep. One of the officers. I rub my eyes and reach for the draw under my bed where I stowed my glasses.  
  
“Yep,” I say, “One minute.” My voice breaks for a moment on the one. The sun is shining in a thin line high up the wall above the door. The detention officers don’t normally give more than a rap at the door, and never this early on a Sunday.  
  
“Get up,” he says. I’m worried. Had I done anything last night to get me in trouble? I’d snapped at Maria and Namiko had blown up at me when I’d been walking around the playing field and then I’d said something like “Deal.” Had she done something over night? I roll out of bed.  
  
Probably not. The inbuilt guilt that was _me_ wasn’t really finding anything to warrant special attention, which meant it was something worse.  
  
I pull on my clothes. Plain, pale pink cloth pants, top and jacket, all stamped with Sununu Youth Development Center. On the left breast of my jacket, above the stamp, is a plain white badge with **Taylor Hebert - SC1204**.  
  
I slip on my shoes and walk over to the door. My room isn’t bad, not really, but it is bare, and cold. Sununu is in Manchester, a fifty minute drive from Brockton Bay, a smaller city with a smaller gang problem and _a lot_ smaller cape problem. They handled the detention of juveniles from all over state but for some reason, rather than being full, for the month that I’d been here the place had never been better than half empty.  
  
Still, that meant I had my own space, so I couldn’t complain. The room was concrete brick covered by a bright white paint, except for the foot closest to the floor which received a dark blue border. In one corner was a steel bunk bed while in the other was a toilet. At the foot of the bed was my free standing single-tier locker. I tended to avoid that, preferring to keep my things in the drawers under my bed. I didn’t have much stuff, anyway.  
  
I unlock the door on my side and he pulls it open.  
  
“Miss Hebert, good morning,” he says, a tall, blonde older man. In his mid-forties maybe.  
  
“Good morning, officer James,” I reply. Behind him the other five cells in the pod fan out in a circle. I have the first cell in the pod and the corridor to the common room is immediately to the right of my door. Mr. James jerks his head at me, one hand on his key ring and begins to walk off and I follow. In my month here, I’ve gotten to know the types of guards that run Juvie. Mr. James is one of the stern ones. Unyielding, punitive. But he’s also fair, and proactive and he doesn’t bother you if he hasn’t got reason to. Most of the guards here tried to be more ‘friendly’. I preferred Mr. James.  
  
He answers my question before I get a chance to ask it.  
  
“There was a message from the night staff at hand over this morning, your dad called. He’ll be visiting this morning and your lawyer’s coming with him. He asked that we get you to call him as soon as you were awake.”  
  
“Err, thanks,” I say, not really focused on him. We’re in the common room, the centre of the residential areas and opposite me are the five phones we can use to contact the outside world. The lawyer, Mr. Edkins. I’d only met him four or five times since my arrest.  
  
“Good luck, kid.” He leaves down another corridor to rap on the doors of another pod. Only two others are in the common room this early. Namiko glares at me before she turns and fiddles with the dvd player and someone else sits with their back to me, sprawling over the back of one of the scratchy blue chairs.  
  
I sit at the phone furthest down the row. The receiver has that cold sort of perspiration that plastic gets when it’s cold. A deep breath. In. Out. I punch in my dad’s number.  
  
He picks up on the first ring.  
  
“Hey kiddo,” he says.  
  
“Hey Dad,” I say.  
  
“How are things over there, kiddo?” Two kiddos in as many sentences, it's not a word Dad says often, except where he can't think of any other way to show he cares, when he says something he knows will upset me. The pit in my stomach gets a little deeper.  
  
I give a faint laugh anyway,  
  
“Not much changed since yesterday, Dad.” I try and inject as much cheer into my voice I can. “Dad, one of the officers said you needed to talk to me?”  
  
“Taylor. . .”  
  
“What is it, Dad?”  
  
“I’m coming to see you today with Mr. Edkins, but I wanted to warn you. The judge in your case signed a judicial waiver yesterday . . . to have you tried in an adult court.”  
  
Ok. Ok. It hits me like a blow to the gut. We’d guessed, known, it was coming but to have it happen now, so late. . . I guess it had been just long enough that I’d become optimistic. Damn it. It had happened, and we had to get on with it.  
  
“Taylor?” My dad’s voice is cautious.  
  
“It’s ok, Dad,” I lie, “It’s not a surprise, not really, we expected this to happen. Mr. Edkin said it was likely to happen and-”  
  
“Taylor there’s more.” My dad interrupts.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“They aren’t going to protect your identity any more -”  
  
“ They can’t do that!” I hiss.  
  
“Taylor-”  
  
“I was a cape, I was in costume! They can’t do that!” My dad’s trying to speak but all I can hear is the pounding of my heart in my ears. No, no, no, no. “How? How can they do that?” My voice is a whine, pathetic, weak. Fuck. Anger, fear, arrogance are rising up but I don’t want them to. I can’t think this way, not with my dad. I try to be me.  
  
“The waiver means they can, your name will go on the public record because you’re being tried as an -”  
  
“Not that[/i].” I growl. Shit. My dad’s silent on the other end. Pull it together Taylor, he’s your dad.  
  
“Taylor, the PRT are saying you weren’t in costume when they arrested you, and you didn’t provide them with a cape name or ‘established identity’. Without a _nom de guerre_ they can’t charge you under one.”  
  
“That’s not fair.” My dad is slow to respond.  
  
“. . . I know.” I think he’s the only one who’s tried harder than I have to forget what I did. We both knew it probably was fair. What is it? We judge others by their actions but ourselves by our intentions.  
  
“I wanted to be a hero, I wanted to do something good for the world. I wanted to prove I was a good person, Dad.”  
  
“I know, Taylor,” he says, “We still have options, this changes some things but it doesn’t change our options. Keep your chin up and we’ll discuss what we’re going to do this afternoon.”  
  
“Yes, Dad,” I say.  
  
“I wanted to warn you. I know it’s a Sunday, but if it makes the news today, or Sununu decide they need to act on it today. . . I didn’t want them to catch you unaware.”  
  
“What do you mean?” I ask.  
  
“The Protectorate were protecting your identity as a child because there’s stricter rules for kids but now they won’t or can’t. Sununu’s not meant for your- I mean, you- It’s not meant for capes.”  
  
“They can’t move me, can they?”  
  
“I don’t know Taylor, maybe. Damn it. Damn it all. I don’t know what they’ll do.”  
  
I want to say something. Something about why the Protectorate had put me here in the first place, about why they think I’m less dangerous here than in a PRT containment unit. But my dad’s voice is strained and I can’t do it.  
  
“It’s OK, Dad.” My voice is less strong than I wanted. I can hear him on the other end, he’s searching for the words but he can’t find them. Two people trying to convince the other that everything’s alright when it’s anything but. “I’ll see you soon,” I add. I just want to go and curl into a ball. He takes my hint.  
  
“OK. I’ll see you soon, I should be there at one.” I’m trying to find something, ‘I look forward to it.’, ‘That’ll be great’, ‘I love you, Dad’. But there’s only a too long second of silence before he cuts off with a click. I listen to the tone for a moment then hook the phone back on the receiver.  
  
One O’clock. The only clock in the common room shows twenty past four, the same as it has for the 33 days I’ve been stuck here. I don’t think they want us to know the time easily, it distracts from the ‘now’. So I know it’s early but not that early. What have I got, four, five hours maybe?  
  
Across from the telephones, beyond the TV, a corrections officer exits the office and crosses to the cafeteria. She unlocks the door and closes it behind her, quietly. Four or five hours, maybe.  
  
I push myself up from the uncomfortable chair and look around. Namiko’s there and she catches my eye first. She stares, I stare. She looks away first, good, even if she serves it with a magnificent dollop of bitch-face. Still, I don’t actually want to hang around and antagonise her just for the sake of it, especially when she’s feeling so snitty.  
  
I just need to do things to occupy my time.  
  
Brushing my teeth, five minutes. Showering and drying myself, twenty-five minutes. Managing my hair, ten minutes. Thinking about the things I try not to think about, five minutes.  
  
The sound of the breakfast bell is a welcome relief.  
  
I’m through to the counter before much of a queue forms. Being a sunday, it’s a full breakfast morning which means liquid eggs, fat with a rind of bacon, a wet sausage and pancakes you can use as a blunt instrument. And some cereal, which was alright, I suppose.  
  
I’m sat alone, on the table which puts my back closest to the wall, when she joins me. Sofia, in for helping her boyfriend stash drugs and arms. I can’t figure out her game. In the time I’ve been here she’s been the most friendly and the most trouble. Sometimes she gets bored of my defensiveness and leaves me alone but never for very long.  
  
Sofia isn’t tall, and at 5’ 8” I must have a head and a half on her. Her hair was probably originally the same colour as mine but it’s now a dark blonde and extremely curly besides. She isn’t built like a rail and her mouth isn’t wide and thin. I didn’t think she was beautiful, not really, but I bet a lot of guys like her anyway. She’s confident, and sexual and she speaks a lot but never really says anything.  
  
She slams her tray down on the table with a bit of force, making officer James glare at us from beside the door.  
  
“Wassup, shadow.” She leans over her food at me and gives me a big grin. She doesn’t know, she can’t, the irony in one of her many nicknames for me but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I look down at my eggs and give them a solid prod with my fork and a ripple spreads out like I’ve tossed a pebble in a puddle.  
  
“I’m pretty much done,” I begin.  
  
“Hold up, killer. You think I haven’t heard?” I stay seated. That’s not a new name. She doesn’t know, she can’t. “You pissed Namiko off and she’s staying pissed, yeah? May be you ain’t so good at being a shadow, no more.”  
  
I squirm in my chair for a minute. I don’t mean to but I still get uncomfortable when I think I’ve bothered someone, when I’m worrying I’ve got something coming my way. I’m still me, most of the time. I take a deep breath and hold myself still.  
  
“Well, maybe Namiko should watch her fucking mouth.” Most of the time. Sofia just leans back and carries on grinning at me.  
  
“Watch out, here comes fucking shadow. Killllerrr!” She makes jazz hands as she sings the last word.  
  
“Are you going to eat, or what?” For once, she doesn’t say anything. She just gives me a look and starts eating her sausage and making faces at me. “You’re sick,” I say. She shrugs.  
  
In the end, I stay with her through breakfast and after as we go through to the common room again. I don’t really want to be with anyone right now but I want to get stuck in my head even less. It’d be a cold day before I call Sofia good people but she was good for this.  
  
The common room fills up quickly and before long there’s about thirty of us in there spread out in such a way across the itchy blue furniture that everyone takes up as much space as they can without actually touching anyone they’re not on good terms with. I remember being disgusted at high school politics. I had no fucking idea. Take forty girls with attitude problems, lock ‘em all together and stand back and watch.  
  
Limited to PG films, tattered classical novels and some sub-par art supplies I’d realised that, for most of the girls, choosing who you’ll back up and who you want to cut down from day-to-day was their way of passing the time.  
  
After a year and a half of being that girl on the bottom rung of the ladder I won’t take part in it and I won’t let anyone bully me into it. I don’t have to feel like I ought to take it, not anymore.  
  
I must spend a couple of hours sitting there, being quiet, watching the girls around me as they chatter and jabber and argue. Watching the guards.  
  
I’m working lazily through a colouring book of flowers and vases, I’ve only got pink and red pencils so it’s not like I can do much better, anyways.  
  
Sofia’s gone and come back again by this point and is taking pleasure in antagonising another girl, Maria. There’s some history there, probably, and Maria’s made the mistake of blocking her view.  
  
“Oh, man this film’s so shit,” says Sofia, her voice nasal and loud. “It’s shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shiiiiii-”  
  
Maria turns around and they get into it and I’m uncomfortably close.  
  
“Do you do anything but fucking talk? I’m trying to watch, puta.”  
  
“Fuck you, puta. I can have an opinion, it’s a free country. Don’t come at me, just ‘cus you’re getting all pissy. I can have my own fucking opinion, puta. It’s a shit film, anyway.”  
  
“Well, I ain’t seen it, so shut your puta mouth, ho.”  
  
“Me vale madres, culero. She cheats, has a baby and he goes boo hoo and gets. Que onda?”  
  
Maria is standing and whatever she’s saying I can’t follow it. Sofia’s trying to look even more relaxed making a face calculated to piss of Maria even more.  
  
I look up as the office door opens at the commotion. They normally intervene way before this. A young guard is halfway out the door but as my eyes reach his face he’s not looking at them, he’s looking at me.  
  
Our eyes meet and his widen. In any other situation I would probably have laughed. He ducks back into the office for a moment then he comes out to deal with Sofia and Maria.  
  
I get a feeling, shit is about to happen. I don’t want it to happen here.  
  
I stand quickly, Sofia’s trying to shout and get around the guard at the other girl now that there’s someone to hold her back. With everyone’s attention focused on them I can slip away to my room.  
  
Shit.  
  
What am I going to do?  
  
What are they going to do?  
  
I’m not going to the Birdcage, number one, that’s not happening. I’ve reached the top of the corridor to my pod, the noise of the common room is fainter here and I can think a little more clearly.  
  
I brush my fingers against the the cool of the wall as I walk along. I doubt they’re going to leave me as I am so that means they’re going to put me in segregation or they’re going to move me somewhere else. The PRT maybe or some high-security adult prison or the Birdcage. Shit. I don’t know.  
  
I can’t stay here, I can’t trust myself into the care of the legal system, it’s too dangerous. I will not go to the Birdcage.  
  
Where does that leave me?  
  
Escape.  
  
If I leave now, in the middle of the day, it’ll be harder for me to get away unnoticed, I don’t know how long they’ll let me hide in my room before they come and investigate. It could be minutes, and witnesses would happen as I get away from Manchester, I would have to be fast to get away clean. On the other hand, if I wait, if I do get segregated I can wait until nighttime and have hours to get out of the city with less chance of being spotted.  
  
But that was a big if. If they moved me out of Sununu instead I’d be fucked. Even if I go into segregation I don’t know whether they have cameras in the cells. I could lose even the advantage of minutes.  
  
I speed up and enter my room, it’s now. I’m going to go now. My eyes flicker over my room. One window to freedom, one toilet, one locker, four walls connected by two obtuse and one acute angles, one bunk-bed, one pillow, one-hundred and fourteen used female hygiene products.  
  
One-hundred and fourteen used female hygiene products spread out all over my bed.  
  
Sofia. No, Namiko. But why? How could they know? How could they do it? Where would they. . .  
  
I don’t know what to do. The smell hits me and I’m there again, as small and powerless and lonely and insignificant as I was then. My palms feel clammy and my tongue imagines it can taste them again.  
  
I don’t know what to do, I don’t fit in here, I don’t belong with these girls and I can’t take it. So I make myself some who can.  
  
Those bitches. Those fuckers. However they’d done it didn’t matter. They’d done it to make me look like a bitch, to try and fuck me. To make me feel weak, to make me feel small. There was nothing, nothing guaranteed to piss me off more.  
  
I’d been enough people’s punching bag, it was time to punch back. To punch back harder.  
  
I’ll escape when I’m done, I wasn’t going to let some fucker feel they’d driven me out. Like they’d got one over on me. I had time. Segregation? Some half-staffed transport truck? Please.  
  
My fists are so tight I can feel my nails digging in. I don’t feel cold, not anymore. I spin on my heel and there’s a man. A man stood right behind me, pressing the door shut with a hand.  
  
Short blonde hair, a smart shirt, thin-rimmed glasses. Tall, thin and kind of bookish looking.  
  
“Miss Hebert,” he says.  
  
I can put two and two together and get four. This man was not on the staff. This man ruined my things. Still, I’m not seeing anything to dissuade me from my reasoning.  
  
“You did this,” I say, it’s not a question.  
  
“I did,” he replies. I’m swinging before he finishes. I’m going to catch him squarely on the chin until I just don’t.  
  
He jerks his head and spins around my fist like a dancer, turning across the length of my arm until his chest is level with my shoulder. He grabs my wrist and my shoulder and in a move I don’t understand and forces me to my knees, turning me so my face is only an inch away from a bloody tampon.  
  
I strike out with an elbow and try and move my legs so I’m in a position to stand even as the pain in my shoulder starts to sear.  
  
“Miss Hebert, we have your father.” A polaroid flicks down onto the sheet, its corner slipping under the tampon. It’s my dad. He’s sat a white table in a white room holding today’s newspaper looking supremely pissed. Shit.  
  
I go still and he lets go. I can hear him take a few steps back and a scuff as he leans against the wall.  
  
“I’ll take that as a sign of your co-operation, due to the current time constraints we find ourself in.”  
  
I’ve turned to face him and the fucker doesn’t even look phased.  
  
“If you hurt my dad, I swear to go-”  
  
“Miss Hebert, we have less than ninety seconds before six guards will open that door and try and take you into their custody. If you have nothing more pertinent to add than threats, stay silent.  
  
“Yes, we have your father. He is safe. And in exchange for three favours he will remain safe. We guarantee it. Considerably more safe than he was in Brockton Bay which will be attacked by Leviathan in forty-nine minutes.”  
  
I open my mouth, my shoulder’s still burning and he’s saying too much. I don’t know where to begin.  
  
“Yes, Leviathan. After the damage you caused last month, it’s highly likely that the city will be condemned. Your father’s future will be significantly more secure with us. Which brings me back to the favours we need.”  
  
He reaches into the pocket of his trousers and pulls out an envelope that he makes me step forward to to take. It has Taylor Hebert across the front in an elegant cursive.  
  
“First, read that. It has a list of instructions that we want you to follow, we believe it will be to the best advantage of both yourself and your father.” I look up at him, he’s got a cellphone in one hand and he takes a short pause to remove his glasses and rub them against the cotton of his shirt.  
  
“But-”  
  
“Taylor,” he interrupts, “I’m sorry that our introduction is so aggressive and uncompromising. I understand this must be unpleasant. But you must understand in turn, the nature of your power . . .  
  
“We couldn’t risk meeting in environment that we did not control entirely, and it was vital that we met.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“We believe you represent one of the most promising opportunities to prevent the end of the world and we can’t ignore that.”  
  
I gasp, in spite of myself. He continues,  
  
“In a few years, we know you will be presented with the opportunity to save the life of Jack Slash. It is vital that you save him. Save him, Taylor, and you save us all. From mass extinction.”  
  
Jack Slash? Jack Slash? I can’t have heard him right. He presses a button and holds the cell to his ear,  
  
“Door me. Again, I’m sorry Taylor. Our time is almost up, I will have to wish you good bye and good luck. Follow the instructions. Save Jack Slash. You can save everyone.” A shiver washes over me.  
  
“Wait, what’s the third?” I ask.  
  
He smiles at me.  
  
“We want you to kill an endbringer, we don’t mind which one.” It’s a smile that’s all teeth and no kindness.  
  
“An endbringer,” I say.  
  
He crosses the distance toward me at speed and drives a hand into my stomach. I can’t breathe and I stumble back and fall.  
  
I don’t land on my bed. Instead, in a horrible moment of confusion I fall too far and land on grass and mud.  
  
Above me is a door showing my room and him looking down at me over the top of his thin-rimmed glasses. Around the edges is nothing but sky and country.  
  
“An endbringer,” he says, “consider it proof of concept.”

*


	3. [Worm] They Don't Wear Masks 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The altpower in this story is a weak PRT rating 1-3 limited Eidolon. She triggered in circumstances that led to her being taken away from her Dad and put into care, and she wants to find out why and what's happened to him, because no one is giving her an answer that she believes. An added complication is that her power has given her prosopagnosia, meaning she can no longer recognise people's faces nearly as well as she can their masks.

**1.1**

***  
  
Friday 17th December, 2010**  
  
The Broadbent household was south of Downtown, in the richer suburbs where the wide roads led easy into the commercial zone. Mr. Broadbent, first name Alan, was in law: property law, or something that sounded like Property law. Alan Broadbent had graduated from Law School near the bottom of his class, but when you graduated from _there_ you were made either way. He’d followed his fiancee back home to Brockton and made a life for himself. Well-educated, and well-off, the Broadbents had the big house, the big cars, and big holidays, what they lacked was the big family.  
  
The Broadbents were very open about the why, and when I had first been taken to their home they’d sat me down and explained it, straight out. Mrs Broadbent, _née_ Cortez, had had a lot of difficulties bringing their eldest daughter into the world and was unable to manage more, naturally. The solution was fostering, and adoption.  
  
There were five of them in that household, not including Alan and Michelle, at the present time. Their eldest, natural-born daughter, who was at Brockton U; their adopted daughter Lizzy who was at Arcadia in her senior year, then Maria and Lisa who were foster kids like me, but in middle school and elementary, respectively.  
  
It should’ve been a squashed household, but it wasn’t. The house was big, the Broadbents were probably good people, and their motives were probably genuine. I just _hated_ it.  
  
They were reporting on me, I knew it. Of course they were, I mean, but I was certain that they weren’t reporting _just_ to the Foster Agency.  
  
“You okay in there, Tay?” asked Alan.  
  
I was sat at the end of the breakfast bar, munching my wheaties slowly. I shrugged, avoiding his gaze. They didn’t like it when I was quiet for too long, too wrapped in my thoughts. “Last day,” I said.  
  
He made a face of some sort. “I love Christmas,” he said, “we go big here, Tay. Don’t worry about anything. Films, food, family.” He waggled his eyebrows, “Presents, lots of presents, it’ll be fun. Oh look at the time. We need to go.” He slugged his coffee back and went to get his satchel and his coat.  
  
My bowl went into the dishwasher and I picked up my bag from next to the stool and slung it over my shoulder. He had a laptop under one arm, his bag over the other and was struggling to pull some paper bags out of the fridge. I grabbed them for him.  
  
“Thanks,” he said. “Girls! Time to go!” We made our way to the door. There was the sound of small people stomping heavily, somehow, downstairs at speed. “Oh, quickly, Tay,” he said, “have you had a chance to get a present for Maria or Lisa?”  
  
I shook my head.  
  
“Thought so, that’s fine,” he said. “Michelle needs to go to Lords Market this weekend, you can go with her. It's Maria’s first Christmas here, too, and I think she’d really appreciate something that came from you.”  
  
This was not ideal. My weekend was planned down to the last detail, and unless it was in the very early morning, I was planning to be asleep for a good chunk of Saturday day. I shrugged again, and he didn’t have a chance to say anything else before the kids were there, Lisa talking at a hundred miles per hour. Evidently, she and Maria had been arguing but they refused to say about what.  
  
We got into Alan’s BMW and took the main route into town from the South-end. Lisa’s grade school and Arcadia were pretty much together, right off the main road, while Maria’s was a little further into Brockton. The car ride was nice, for me, though I still would’ve preferred it if the Broadbents let us catch the bus like normal kids. Lisa could talk the back leg off a donkey, and Maria’s age-inappropriate insults would keep Alan’s attention on the back seats, and it was the quiet that let me think, and plan. The morning commute was solitude, a moment away from the unique demands of home, school, and Ward-stuff.  
  
We dropped off Lisa, and I got out, too.  
  
“Work hard, see you at four,” he said, from the wheel.  
  
“I’ve got my extracurriculars this evening,” I said, “I won’t be back until eight, maybe?”  
  
He slapped his forehead, and I stepped back to let Maria pass me and clamber into the front seat. “Well, I’ll see you this evening then. We’ll keep some dinner warm for you.”  
  
I looked at him for a minute, looked at his face, tried to see exactly what it was he wanted from me. “Thanks, Mr. Broadbent,” I said.  
  
“It’s Ala–” Maria pulled the door shut, and I had already turned away.  
  
It was only a short way to the gates of Arcadia. Arcadia High was the best school in Brockton Bay, but it looked brutal from the outside. The whole building was surrounded by green metal bars in an eight foot fence, and from the top of that, thin metal wire stretched up high and away to cover the whole school: Arcadia’s signature Faraday cage; it served to keep its students focused by stopping their phones from working in class.  
  
Arcadia was right in the center of Downtown and so there wasn’t much space between the cage and the building, only a strip of concrete and some benches before the steps up to the main door. The school was arranged in an H. The long South Wing held most of the classes that I needed as a Sophomore, and the Cafeteria and Gymnasium were at opposite ends of that wing. The North Wing held the auditorium where the general assemblies were held, and the labs, and that was about it. The wings were connected by a little strip that had all the offices of the administration, and the teacher’s lounge and stuff like that. For those in the know, it also had a changing room, an enclosed loading bay, and hidden lockers filled with skintight outfits for kids. This was, _hopefully_ , not something many High Schools could boast.  
  
Arcadia’s widely known secret was that it was a school for superheroes. Or, super-sidekicks at least. Of which I was one.  
  
I joined the crush of kids pushing through the gate to head to Homeroom. I had only been here for about a month, and sometimes I still had trouble believing I wasn’t going to be hoiked back to Winslow the moment I let my guard down, or that some aspect of Winslow wasn’t suddenly going to follow me here. The gate was the worst part of starting the school day, being hemmed and pressed in by that many people, just waiting for one of them to look at me and _say_ something. _Do_ something. It wasn’t rational, I was just a face in the crowd to all of them, no longer new enough to be worth constant cape-scrutiny. Still, as always, the discomfort was enough for my power, and I felt it stir awake.  
  
It was weird to think of it like that from what the others had told me, to treat it as if it was alive, but it really seemed like it was. It did things, by itself, reacted to stuff. Slowly, ponderously, but powerfully. Like a particularly dumb horse, or something. Like a living ship, maybe. Something that you had to steer, slowly.  
  
It stirred, as I pushed through the crowded gateway, tasting, inspecting. Inside my fingertips that tingling, numb, vibration sensation, the one you get when you fall asleep on your arm, grew more intense. In front of me, my eyes were locked on the green hoodie of a senior, and faintly I started to see a phantom word take root between its fibres. Wordwall, and Sonic Strike, then. The Wordwall power waxed almost every day at school, at some point, but the Sonic touch power was much rarer.  
  
It seemed to me that I was an extremely-discount, knock-off Eidolon, though even that was overselling it. Eidolon, maybe the strongest cape in the world, could have three or four powers at a time, whatever suited him in any given moment, and each one was as strong as the strongest capes.  
  
 _My_ power had access to a dozen small powers, or so. It was like a very large room with too little carpet; every time you tried to pull it into one corner it was pulled out from all the others. It was a very Zero-sum sort of power, unlike _his_. And, my power didn’t get very strong at its strongest. I was never going to out-run Shadow Stalker, out-fight Aegis or out-blast Gallant. It was frustrating, but it was mine. The powers were always there with me, no matter how faint.  
  
I made it to the door, as the powers finished growing. It was Friday, the last day of the semester, and I just had to make it to the end of the day, and my first Patrol. My first opportunity to be out and about with powers and a costume since the PRT had collared me.  
  
There was a red-headed boy sitting on the benches as I approached the front door, he waved at me. Was that..? He pointed at me with one finger, held like a gun.  
  
“Freeze!”  
  
I recognised his voice, at least. “Dennis,” I said. “Why aren’t you inside?”  
  
“I got tired of doing the whole mime thing every morning.”  
  
I scowled at him and he held his hands up. “Not criticising,” he said. “I’m not blaming you, cool it. We’re in the same home-room, and the same first class. It’s not weird that I’d wait for you, after a month.”  
  
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Come on.”  
  
He asked me about my morning as we went in, and I answered in my usual way, and made the same sort of small talk. It wasn’t super natural yet, not considering the brief time we’d known each other, but it was something. I _could_ talk to him, I could believe that he was a loose sort of friend.  
  
The morning went quite quickly, though it still felt _long_ to me. I sat next to Dennis in the first class and made sure I took note of which jacket he was wearing (grey cuffs and collar, blue, thin, with a zip) before we separated after first period. Arcadia had a lot of money, a lot of facilities that Winslow High hadn’t, and the teachers were more motivated for sure, though none were ‘ _Oh, Captain, my Captain_ ’ quality. It had taken a month, but I realised, the money wasn’t why the kids here did so much better than all the other schools bar Immaculata.  
  
Arcadia had you sign a contract before you came here, a supercilious, fake thing. Your guardian signed all the real stuff, then the last one was ‘The Promise’ with a little signature for the student. An indication that they’d commit. Arcadia started early and finished late. Arcadia had shorter holidays – particularly the Summer – and Arcadia had class on the mornings on Saturdays. And, Arcadia gave a _lot_ of Homework. It was horrible, and part of some fatiguingly annoying national academy programme that was very popular in New York and Boston, but… it wasn’t completely terrible. By the end of Winslow, I had started to think that maybe I wasn’t very clever. Here, my GPA had risen a whole point to a 3.4, and I was hoping it’d keep rising.  
  
It was stupid, and lame, but it made me happy. I know it would’ve made my mom proud, and my dad. The thought was enough for me to keep trying at it.  
  
Still, Arcadia wasn’t _ridiculous_ , and today was full of Christmas quizzes, and games, and I heard my English class at the end of the day was showing that Romeo & Juliet with Leonardo Di Caprio, which I was completely on board with.  
  
I made my way down Tinsel lined corridors to my locker, and put my books away, before heading back towards the cafeteria.  
  
There was a boy waving at me, from a table near the window on the far side. Blue jacket, grey collar, I went and sat with him.  
  
“Hey, Taylor,” he said.  
  
“Dennis,” I said, and there was hardly any inflection at the end.  
  
“The very same.”  
  
I got my lunch out, a sandwich, some pepsi and then an oil roasted pepper salad that Michelle had made with dinner, yesterday.  
  
“Save the table?” he asked. And he shucked off his jacket and darted through the cafeteria before I had a chance to say anything.  
  
What a tool. I pulled my hoodie a little tighter. I hated eating in the cafeteria by myself. I was facing the window, and my back was to the rest of the student body. _Just eat_ , I told myself. He’ll come back.  
  
My sandwich tasted very dry suddenly, and I had no appetite.  
  
A boy swung into the bench opposite me, shaking the whole table. He slapped a tray down on the table, full of food.  
  
“Hey,” he said.  
  
“Dennis?” I asked.  
  
He looked at me for a second, pausing. “Pew, pew,” he said. Miming finger guns. “Chris,” he said, after a moment longer. Kid Win, of course. That made sense.  
  
“Sorry,” I said.  
  
“Don’t be, you can’t help it.” He took a moment, and made a big show of smelling his lunch, wafting it to his nose with big hand movements. “Yum, Mac & Cheese,” he said, “my favourite.”  
  
I looked at him from under my eyebrows, tried to memorise his face… again. It wasn’t that I couldn’t see it. I could see his nose, that his hair was brown, that he had a couple of tiny moles on his cheek, but if he was taken out of the room and brought back I wouldn’t recognise him. Not without his mask.  
  
“What have you got for lunch today?” He looked a bit odd, he was squirming in his seat, and avoiding my gaze. Was that the ADHD, or was I being awkward?  
  
I told him, as Dennis rejoined us (Chris said his name as he came back), and the conversation turned to other things.  
  
“Tonight’s your first ‘stroll’, right?” Chris asked, and although he didn’t make quote fingers, or do anything overt really, I could hear the stress he put over the word.  
  
I beamed at him. “Yeah, I’m excited. I’ve got tall, red, and jumpy.”  
  
“A?” asked Dennis. I nodded, and he made a face.  
  
“I thought he was one of the fun ones. Funny? Not too serious?” This was not good, if not. I was relying on being paired with the happy-go-lucky mentor Assault in order to get off the beaten track. If I ended up having to patrol the boardwalk and sign autographs my whole Christmas would be _ruined_.  
  
“No, he’s fun, don’t get me wrong,” said Dennis, “we get on, but he’s _always_ fun, you know? He doesn’t take no for an answer, and he’ll always do the opposite of whatever he thinks you want.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Ignore me,” he said, “he’s great, and your first pa– stroll will be a lot more fun with him than with The Boss or Battery.”  
  
“I didn’t think you had a problem going out with Battery for a stroll, Dennis,” said Chris, quickly.  
  
Dennis elbowed him. “Anyway,” he said, “the first one is always the most exciting, and it’s Missy on the console today so–”  
  
My phone buzzed violently in my pocket. Considering phones weren’t really supposed to do that in Arcadia, there was only one thing it could be.  
  
Dennis smacked his head into the table. He groaned. It looked melodramatic, but Chris turned so that his body hid Dennis from the rest of the Cafeteria for a moment, and it let Dennis look at his phone for the rest of us.  
  
Dennis sat up. “Well,” he said, “forget about your stroll tonight. Uber and L33t are heading towards Arcadia, and they’re smashing shop-fronts and harassing people.”  
  
“Prime sidekick work,” said Chris. “At least we ate together. Look at Carlos.” For my benefit, he added, “Middle guy, sat on the table, over by the register.”  
  
I saw him. Dark skinned, dark haired. He was in the middle of a group of friends, and he was looking right at us, leg jiggling but unable to get to the phone in his pocket. He raised both his hands a little in the universal gesture for, _what’s going on_? I got that one at least.  
  
All three of us stood and left. That was clear enough.  
  
  


***** *****

  
  
The Wards were a nationwide team that took parahumans below the age of 18 (with a little grace period for those ageing out). It was the best of a bad lot, for me. My powers hadn’t come in a… nice way, and when I had gotten out of hospital I hadn’t really had any place to be. When you signed onto the Wards the Government was in your camp, you were supported, mentored, and you reclaimed your future. In the entrance interview, that’s what I told them, and they must have felt it was suitably peppy to get my debut moving quickly.  
  
There were definitely perks. The Wards programme paid you a decent salary that went into a Trust that I’d get access to when I turned 18. Over the three years that I had ahead of me I’d make at least $150,000 and that was without merchandising, which could make me who knows how much, enough for a decent College probably. I got a small hourly rate in addition to the salary, too. At 16 hours a week of planned Ward time, I was getting over a $100 a week. It was still new enough that it felt a phenomenally large sum of money to me. I hadn’t _done_ anything for them yet, and I still had over 450 dollars.  
  
As far as I could tell, the Wards real job was to keep us out of trouble. Over the last month, after three _tedious_ weeks of power testing, homework, and PR training, I had seen what my more senior teammates got up to. It wasn’t a lot.  
  
There were seven other Wards. Vista, Clockblocker, Kid Win, Aegis, Shadow Stalker, and Gallant formed the team. For two more weeks, Triumph was our leader, before he moved on.  
  
The Protectorate was the country’s adult team. When Triumph had turned 18 (shortly before my joining), he’d qualified to move up into the proper leagues, but had logistically needed some time to make the leap. The Protectorate were _much_ more like what you’d expect from a superhero team. They mentored, they did PR, sure, but they also took leads, chased down cases and fought the supervillains. When Triumph left, leadership would pass to the next oldest, Aegis, and Triumph would get to start seriously taking on the criminals that had made Brockton Bay what it was today.  
  
“...excepting Armsmaster who won’t drink. But it won’t be hard. He’ll leave first, and then it’ll be easy.” Clockblocker, Dennis, had heard that Challenger was going to spike the punch at the Protectorate/Ward Christmas party, in honour of her leaving and Triumph’s promotion. He was plotting. I couldn’t help but feel that his tactical problem-solving was being focussed on the wrong thing.  
  
“Don’t forget about Battery,” said Kid Win. The van we were in went over a particularly bad pothole and he wobbled, reaching up to grab the strap on the ceiling. “Let’s focus, now.”  
  
“What he said,” said Aegis.  
  
Uber and L33t weren’t far from the school, but the PRT van that was stationed at Arcadia was doing a two-minute lap of the block to drop us off between the two supervillains and the Boardwalk that they were heading toward.  
  
We were all costumed up. It made it easier for me. Costumes and masks didn’t change shape, were very distinctive, and I could recognise who was who easily. I plucked at my own mask and its faux-fur border. It was meant to make me look like a snow leopard, but I wasn’t sure it was worth the itch. And I was sat on my short cape, if I moved without thinking about it, it caught on my neck.  
  
“How are you feeling, Cryogal?”  
  
 _Cryogal_. I was regretting not arguing for Flash-Freeze, and damn the marketability and my dream of an en suite College room. My stomach turned over again, as we went over a bump.  
  
“I am a little nervous,” I said. _Work with me, Power_ , I thought. I could only manage a chilly vapor from my fingers, while my Power was edging into things that were no use to me. There was a power growing taller now. The one that made faint lines, not something I could see but more like something I imagined I should be able to see, heading forward and back from each of the boys' heads. _No._ I focused on the vapor in my fingers, tried to think _cold_ thoughts, and the line power began to sink back down.  
  
“Don’t be,” replied Clockblocker, “they’ll shout at us, maybe do something a bit flashy then disappear, same as always. Aegis will chase them, and the rest of us will get in the van to look forward to some well-earned paperwork.”  
  
Kid Win laughed.”Tough luck, Aegis. Enjoy having the sky to yourself while you can.” And he tapped at the hoverboard he had strapped to his back. “One more performance check after Winter Break, and you’re going to have to get used to eating my dust. Strobe. Whatever.”  
  
Carlos scoffed. Aegis. I was supposed to use Ward names in costume, and regular names otherwise, religiously. It was meant to prevent mistakes. Truthfully, I really didn’t want to slip up. Almost every Superhero I had met had been so kind, and so welcoming to me. I didn’t want to mess that up.  
  
“Is it just us four?” I asked, interrupting Kid Win and Aegis.  
  
Aegis tapped on the divider that separated us from our handler, in the front, and repeated the question.  
  
“We’ll be dropping you off in one minute, get ready,” he said. “Vista and Shadow Stalker aren’t expected. Protectorate response is expected.”  
  
“What about Triumph?” asked Aegis.  
  
There was a moment's pause. “He’s patrolling with Dauntless near Archer’s bridge.” So, yes. Just the four of us. Vista and Shadow Stalker were the other girls on the team, but unlike all the rest of us, they didn’t go to Arcadia. Vista because she was in Junior High, and Shadow Stalker just because. The last missing member of our team was Gallant, the tinker-tech Blaster and ‘Most Likely to Get the Key to the City’. Aegis said he was sick today. Sick on the last day of school, same as his girlfriend Victoria Dallon—Glory Girl of New Wave. I don’t think any of us were buying it. Deputy Director Renick would probably be asking him some pointed questions later.  
  
The van stopped sharply, and I almost fell out of my seat. The others were more prepared. Kid Win was opening up the back door and diving out, and Aegis was quickly behind him. He put his hand on my shoulder to steady me.  
  
“Stay behind us. Stay close to Hanson’s team. Remember. Identify…”  
  
“Clarify, Fortify, Respond,” I finished. I had had a lot of tactics drilled down to _aide memoires_ that I’d needed to rote learn, by this point.  
  
Neither L33t, or Uber were Shakers—though with L33t’s Tinkering, you could never be _entirely_ certain what you were going to be facing—and that meant I could follow the usual pattern for a Ward Blaster engaging a villain.  
  
There’d been a lot of learning, to get to this point. I’d never heard of the proper Cape Categories before the 150 page Ward Primer book had landed on the Broadbent’s table, excepting Tinker, but they underpinned every Parahuman encounter that I’d undertake as a Ward, by rule or by exception.  
  
Point in case, I thought, as I jumped out of the van. Uber was a Thinker, while L33t was a Tinker. Basic tactics would tell us we had to take Uber down first. However, long experience had taught Brockton Bay that the opposite was true where these two were concerned. If L33t went down, Uber could often do little more than expertly somersault over your head and escape. Uber’s Dunk and Dodge was one of the reasons their channel was still pretty popular.  
  
Because I was nervous about my first proper parahuman fight, sure, but I was _really_ nervous about messing up and having it all go out on L33t and Uber’s stream. The first thing I needed to do was take down whatever drone L33t was using to livestream their rampage. The second thing I needed to do was make sure that Uber didn’t dunk on _me_ when he ran.  
  
My Power understood that it seemed. As I stepped down onto the asphalt, I felt it moving. It rose up, and my fingertips grew cold as the power swelled. Perfect.  
  
Around me, the temperature dropped, and little ice-crystals began to settle on top of my gloves.  
“Looking frosty, Cryogal!” said Dennis, with two thumbs up. “What is that, a snow leopard?”  
  
He had been at the hospital when I’d made my debut to the press, I realised. He hadn’t seen my costume before the van. I stretched out my cape and gave it a little shimmer.  
  
“Neat,” he said.  
  
My costume was polar themed, in keeping with my ice power. It was iceberg blue in large part, fading into white on the extremities. I had white boots that were a cross between sneakers and galoshes, and my gloves were similarly white, and extended to my elbow where they flared out with a retro-style wing. My bodysuit was embedded in little panels of a low-key tinker ceramic that gave it a bit of a SWAT feel. My cape extended to just above my knees, and I worried a short cape look a little odd. It was lined with faux fur, and attached to a hood that I pulled over my head. I had had very little do with its design but I was happy with how it looked  
  
My favourite part was my mask, though. It had corrective lenses so that I didn’t have to wear my glasses, and it was designed to look like an artistic abstract representation of a big cat. To keep it comfortable on my face, it was lined with that same faux fur, and tufts of it escaped beyond the borders of the mask: like a lion’s mane.  
  
I gave Clockblocker a thumbs up back.  
  
A second van was pulling up next to ours.  
  
“Here’s the squad,” said Hanson. Hanson was our handler, and he’d jumped out the front of our van. A full squad of PRT troopers jumped out, eight of them, dressed in black tactical-op body armour, some with shotguns, some with smaller arms and more gadgets, and one with a big tank and a foam sprayer.  
  
They started spreading out into the street, heading towards the near alleys, clearing out the shop fronts, and setting up a couple positions a bit back from the vans. I felt I was being shown up.  
  
Aegis was floating above the street, looking into the distance. Clockblocker stood by me, and Kid Win was fiddling with his laser pistols.  
  
“Aegis, what do you want your team to do?” Hanson called up to him.  
  
Aegis looked at us, and dropped down. “Uh…” he said. He was the next oldest Ward in Brockton Bay, and in two weeks he’d be our leader, full-time.  
  
“Is the position good here?” asked Hanson.  
  
“Uh…” said Aegis, but then he dropped to the floor. “Ok, ok. They’re not here yet, so we’ve got a little time. I need to see where they’re… I’m the only Brute. Hanson, can you turn these vans sideways, and Kid Win and Taylor, if you join the PRT squad and get ready to support from there. Clock, hide behind the van. When we’ve seen whatever L33t’s doing, I want you to get in close with Uber, you’re a bad matchup for him. Is that Ok?”  
  
“You’re the boss,” said Hanson with a grin. “Staggered Chevron, boys,” he said to the drivers, and both vans reversed to take up position. I noticed that it perfectly covered where the PRT squad had already split to.  
  
The Wards Handlers were all trained PRT troopers, and long in the tooth. They had to have more experience than the four of us combined, twice over. Technically they were our liaison with the PRT forces, and we commanded ourselves when the Protectorate weren’t around. Obviously, that wasn’t the case in practice. I could see now why the others complained about the farce of it, in the Wards HQ common room, it was play-acting at choosing engagement strategy.  
  
Still, we all did as Aegis instructed. Kid Win and I hustled back to the new line, while Clockblocker peeled off to hide.  
  
We heard them before we saw them. There was a rumble that went through our feet, like a lorry going down the road right next to your house, for about a quarter of a minute before they turned the corner from Main Street.  
  
We weren’t far from the Bay, so at the end of the road we could see the edge of the old South Ferryport, and the sea beyond it, as the street sloped down to the coast. It explained why they were going so slowly, because Uber was pushing a large loosely-packed ball of rubbish uphill ahead of him, while L33t was jogging behind, cheering him on.  
  
“Do you recognise it?” I asked Kid Win. He shook his head.  
  
One of the PRT squad members leaned forward. “It’s Katamari,” he said. Up close, Kid Win’s orange tinted visor didn’t completely hide his eyes, so the trooper saw it when his eyebrow rose. “Property damage,” he said. “They’re going to roll that ball into things.”  
  
Sure enough, Uber made a beeline for a mailbox, and when he hit it, it crumpled and came away from the sidewalk easily, the tortured metal screaming as it deformed. The duo themed their crimes on videogames to boost their viewer numbers. They weren’t up to drug pushing, or pulling off big heists and sales, so I figured most of their money came from their stream, and petty thefts.  
  
“Uber, L33t,” Aegis shouted, “Put down the thing, and surrender peacefully!”  
  
They were still a 100 yards ahead of us, so whatever L33t’s response was went unheard. Aegis uncrossed his arms and swooped down the road, flying straight at L33t.  
  
“That’s our cue,” said Kid Win. He pointed his laser pistols at the man-sized rubbish ball and started blasting, little flashes of red light streaking out and hitting it to little effect.  
  
I held my hand up, felt the ice respond. My Power was on board, and getting stronger by the moment. Vapor in the air formed into crystals, and over a couple of seconds I was holding an icicle in my hand, almost a foot long.  
  
Uber saw Aegis coming, and as he reached them, he rolled the ball sideways, catching him in the side. Whatever strange effect was holding all the junk together worked on him too. Uber pushed the ball to the other side of the street, Aegis trapped on the outside.  
  
“Fuck,” said Kid Win, and he turned to start shooting L33t, rather than risk hitting Aegis.  
  
What could I do? I couldn’t throw my Icicle that far. I couldn’t see Clockblocker, he must still be behind the nearer Van.  
  
Ok, Identify: There was Uber, there was L33t, no problem. The villains were identified. And Aegis was trapped in their tinker-tech, hitting the ground again and again. They turned again, and started pushing towards us. Obviously the prospects of more people and two PRT vans was too enticing.  
  
Clarify: seek more information. “Do they have weapons in the Katchama-whatever, or any more tricks?” I asked the trooper. He shook his head. Had anyone told Console? I tapped my ear.  
  
“Er, Console. Aegis is incapacitated.”  
  
The earpiece was silent for a second then a male voice I didn’t recognise came back to me. “Miss Militia is on her way, five minute eta.”  
  
“Check, Console,” came Clockblocker’s voice.  
  
Fortify. Fortify? How would I make our position favorable? I looked at the ball of junk. They were halfway to us, and Kid Win was still shooting, how many laser shots did his guns carry? Not important right now, I reminded myself. L33t had ducked behind Uber, too. I could only see the edges of his weird headpiece, like a tic tac turned sideways, coloured in stripes of purple.  
  
“Hanson,” I said. “If we keep their attention, can you get the PRT to spray foam ahead of the ball?”  
  
He looked at me from where he was crouched down behind the second van. “Absolutely,” he said.  
  
“Kid Win,” I said, “You go right, I’ll go left. Focus on L33t, the ball will roll into the Bay if Uber tries to help.”  
  
He nodded. “Ok.” And then he took off without so much as a ‘3, 2, 1’.  
  
My boots weren’t easy to run in, I felt like my ankle might go at any moment, but I picked up speed anyway. This would _work_ , I told myself. This was a good response, and it was _my_ plan. I so desperately wanted it to work.  
  
It felt a lot further than 40 yards. About 10 yards out, I had gone wide enough to catch sight of L33t and Uber. L33t had a little Santa hat on top of his tic tac head. Cute.  
  
I threw my icicle, and it went wide, in a bad way. They’d turned to face Kid Win who had got there first, and my icicle passed right between them. I’d thrown it too hard. It soared past them, and right at Kid Win. He dodged, thank god, but it gave them the advantage.  
  
L33t pulled a pistol that looked more steam-punk than tinker tech and fired at Kid Win. It was some sort of golden forcefield, but it struck out and threw him back head over heels. L33t turned to me, and Uber resumed pushing his junk ball. I needed to get to Kid Win. Another Icicle started to form in my hand, but L33t was already raising his gun.  
-  
I threw a snowball at him and it caught him right in the face.  
  
He spluttered. Wiped the snow off his face. I threw another snowball at him and caught him in the shoulder. I formed them as fast as I could, one after the other. He was _laughing_ , even as he flinched out the way. His laugh was shrill, and nasal. Head turned away from me half-ran half-crouched till he was on the other side of his teammate.  
  
Where L33t was skinny, crooked and gangly, Uber was _thick_. He looked like a marine, in spandex, and his back was a real triangle. A proper taper, it was almost distracting. He was broad enough for L33t to use as cover, that was my point.  
  
“Not fair. It’s not meant to snow till next week.” His voice was wheedling, and he wasn’t talking to me. A small drone, completely spherical and golden was floating above him, turning circles and around them both.  
  
It was enough time, the next one was proper ice and I threw it as hard as I could. At least while their attention was on me, Kid Win was free to rally. It spiralled and struck Uber on the back of the head, knocking his odd green helmet into contact with his Katamari ball. Where it stuck.  
  
“Oof,” he grunted. “Little help?”  
  
He had stopped pushing the ball, and his head was turned awkwardly like he couldn’t pull it free. He couldn’t, I realised! He was wearing a mostly green spandex costume, but his gloves were black, and bulky, and the fingers had little metal frames around them. It had to be that only his hands didn’t get stuck on the ball!  
  
L33t was reaching up to get him free, and this was my chance to finish the fight. By myself.  
  
I had a half-packed iceball and I threw it like a pitcher. My aim wasn’t great but it hit the rubbish ball and exploded, which was enough to make L33t pause for a second, and then I was running at him, flinging powder balls again. If I could get close enough to stop him freeing Uber, maybe I could knock him in, maybe both of them. And then that would be that until Miss Militi—  
  
There was only a brief glance at his steam-punk blunderbuss. Facing blindly backwards, around his body, the barrel a great big black maw.  
  
I was hit by a giant. All the air left me in a rush, and I was dashed 10 feet backwards. The world spun on a dime. I didn’t feel like I was moving but that the street was, the shops were suddenly in a washing machine turning around and away from me. The ground punched me in the back of the head, then kicked my knee and my wrist and all the side of my body, and my mask ran up, and my faces was scraping along the gravel. There was a moment of blinding white feeling, and then it was _real_ pain. Deep, angry and throbbing.  
  
I didn’t get up quickly. It felt quickly, but it couldn’t have been, because everything was different.  
  
Uber was free, The ball was ten yards further on, but stopped. Uber was dancing, flowing backs and around Clockblocker who was swinging at him, big angry blows that left him wide open, hoping to invite a blow back. Just anything to make contact with him.  
  
L33t had his own problems. Kid win was shooting at him, and this time he wasn’t an easy target. He had gotten on his hoverboard, and was zipping over their heads in short quick turns. However, it did have an affect on his aim. I didn’t see a single shot hit.  
  
It was a little hard to move. When I walked, my knee ached and I limped. My Power wobbled. I could feel it tugging against me. I had other gifts, things that would be more useful than a _snowball_.  
  
I let the vapor rise out from my fingers, let the powder form and harden to ice and my Power blinked first. It got quicker, quicker than it had before, surging up. I hobbled back towards the fight, and this time I didn't throw the icicle. I let it grow thicker until it was half again as thick as my arm, then drew my hands out.  
  
The icicle grew quickly, from a foot it reached two, then three, then four. I let it taper, drew it in a little thinner on the ends, until it was taller than I was.  
  
And then it was back into battle. I chose Uber over L33t. Kid Win’s aim was keeping L33t harried but as I was likely to get hit as the villain if I joined them. Instead, if I could cut down Ubers gymnastics and Clockblocker could tag him then it’d be three on one. Who knew, perhaps we’d even pin them down and get the arrest.  
  
Uber wasn’t facing me, so I swung my Ice-spear at his ankles. I was careful to make it so that Clockblocker was on one side, I was on another, and the ball cut off as much of the rest as possible. The spear wasn’t exactly well weighted, and it was a lot heavier than I had thought it would be. It was all the more satisfying when I connected with his foot, heavily. I pushed into the momentum ‘ _strike through your opponent, Taylor_ ’ and he toppled.  
  
It was no good. He fell, but he didn’t fall normally, for all that I had caught him by surprise. He twisted and landed on a shoulder in a roll that took him between Clockblocker and I. My spear was too unwieldy, I was in the wrong position to try and hit him as he recovered his balance, and then he was stood, facing us.  
  
“ **Hahahaha** ,” he laughed. And it didn’t sound real, it sounded more practiced and villainous, like something off a Saturday morning cartoon.  
  
I hefted my spear upright, so it was pointed up at the sky and I was holding it near the bottom half.  
  
“Cryogal—“ said Clockblower, but I had already moved.  
  
I took a step in on my good leg and brought the spear down overhead. Uber stepped to the side, so I swung, and he ducked underneath by a hair, so I jabbed and he grabbed.  
  
The creep had the nerve to wink at me. Then he pulled on the spear and I fell towards him, and let go. He caught me with a palm right to the middle of my chest and I fell back. My bad leg gave out and I fell into Clockblocker and spilled to the ground again.  
  
“Oh crap,” came Dennis’ voice. I rolled off him and turned.  
  
“Welcome to the ball,” said Aegis from halfway up.  
  
Clockblocker was sat on the floor, his back in contact with the Karamaru. He tried to stand but can’t get more than an inch of wriggle.  
  
“Behind you,” he called suddenly.  
  
I turned to see Uber spinning my spear like a cheerleader. He made it look effortless. With a step, and a swing like a pro Batter he took me in the shoulder and I fell shoulder first onto the ball, too.  
  
Three wards, incapacitated by the worst villains in the city. _One_ of them.  
  
“First time?” asked Uber. He sounded normal. “Commiserations.” Then his game voice came back. “King of All Cosmos, drone on me!”  
  
 _No_!  
  
I put one hand to my shoulder and let the chill come. It was freezing cold, even through my costume, but it worked. Ice started to form in between the cranks of the chair and the mail-box I had gotten stuck between.  
  
Uber had his back to me, and the golden snitch was staring straight at him. I formed another icicle in my hand and smashed at the ice that was now between me and the junk. There was a vibrating in my fingers, like I’d knocked my elbow, and it shook up and into the icicle. Faint, it grew stronger while my Ice power slipped a little away.  
  
There was a current, a counter-resonance that I could feel, running through it and slowly the slight shaking the icicle change to match it. I smashed away at the ice, and it began to fracture.  
  
“Hey streamers, your boy Uber here with not one, not two, but _three_ Wards. Let’s see what they think of our theme today.”  
  
The Ice shattered and my icicle pushed through into the junk. When it hit something further in it exploded in my hand. The chair, the mail-box, all the glass and shop stuff that they’d stolen collapsed, falling apart into chaos.  
  
“Oh shit,” said Uber. Aegis was on him in a second, Clockblocker a second behind. With Aegis’ flight and super strength he had a much harder time dodging, each punch and jab from my teammates getting closer and closer to him.  
  
I was holding my hand to my chest. Where the icicle had exploded it had cut my hand wide open, and the pain of my ribs, my skinned leg and my busted knee was only getting worse.  
  
There was a rapidly growing roar, the scream of a motorbike, and then it was rushing up the street from the coast. The black of the Protectorate's bikes, it skidded to a stop maybe 20 yards from us and its rider was off and shooting in half a second flat. Miss Militia.  
  
She was firing what looked like a shotgun, which disappeared and reappeared in a flash of green after every shot. L33t had his leg caught by what must have been a bean bag and he spun into the air and slapped onto the floor, where Kid Win hit him in the chest with one of his bolts which crackled and fizzed. Miss Militia caught him with another in the shoulder as he came to a stop.  
  
Kid win zipped down on his hoverboard, to secure the villain could gather his wits.  
  
In the distraction, Clockblocker had tagged Uber. He stood, arm raised in a block, perfectly still. Clockblocker had the power to freeze things he touched in time for a short, variable period of time. For capes like Uber, if you got Clockblocked it was all over.  
  
Miss Militia headed straight to L33t. She was dressed in her distinctive costume, olive green and camouflage, and the stars and stripes bandana over his mouth and nose.  
  
I hobbled towards Carlos. “Well,” I said. I couldn’t think of how to finish it.  
  
He grunted at me, but didn’t respond. Instead he flew towards the PRT vans, to the foam sprayer.  
  
“What’s the matter with him?” I asked Clockblocker.  
  
Clockblocker looked at me from where he was stood with Uber, one hand resting on the villain’s shoulder. “Jesus, Cryogal,” he said, “are you alright?”  
  
“I’ve been better,” I said, and I settled to sit on the asphalt.  
  
“We’re gonna have a hell of a briefing after this one,” said Dennis.  
\--------------------------------


	4. [Worm] Powering Through 1-4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story would be a short romp through Brockton Bay (A.K.A Trump City, in this AU) as Taylor helps Brian in his main quest to reunite the Undersiders. They've splintered, and each of the gang is now in a sticky situation in different corners of the city. Following the events of the prologue, a weird dimensional miasma has covered a fair amount of the city and surrounding countryside, and any cape in Brockton Bay, bar Tinkers and Trumps, have their power converted into a Trump form that is sometimes similar and sometimes less similar to what their power does outside Brockton Bay.

**Prologue:**  
  
The sun rose over the foothills west of the city and our beat up station wagon slugged up the winding road. It was early, too early, and I was tired, curled up in the passenger seat next to Dad.  
  
The light of the dawn pressed on my eyelids in hot yellow.  
  
“Taylor! Look, Taylor.”  
  
I protested.  
  
“It’s Scion, Taylor.”  
  
Dad was craning over the dash, looking up through the windshield at the sky. A sunbeam, like molten gold, a bar of solid and liquid light rose from the West and headed East. It was really him.  
  
He passed us, flew over the city, to the Atlantic. Off to save someone, do something, do anything.  
  
The speartip of his golden vapor trail was just above the ocean when the Device appeared. A space-warping one sided donut in silver and blue; it activated. Tentacles, flesh, a garden of body parts rising from the water in steamy gray, a mirage, only half-there. Eldritch. There was a lurid stab of actinic green spark that left spots in my vision.  
  
Scion fell, the light left.  
  
There was something coming at us, like a thickening in the air. A wall of white.  
  
“Taylor!”  
  
We went through the barrier at the edge of the drop.  
  
No camp that year.  
  
*  
  
 **1**  
  
Taylor flinched awake, and her head smacked against the door. The step she had used to keep herself from the alley floor was as cold as the grave. Her breath puffed brief clouds, thicker than Brockton Bay’s miasma.  
  
This close to the sea, the city had had little time to slow the wind. Its fingers scratched at her cheeks and nose where her hat couldn’t reach and her two coats couldn’t meet. _At least I can’t smell myself_.  
  
She shivered. Long, cold months had taught her the folly of giving into her body, and staying in the slight warmth of her sleeping bag.  
  
“Come on. Early bird gets the church crowd.”  
  
It was Sunday, and there was a Presbytarian church on the ocean road that hugged the coast. It was set on the Atlantic-facing boundary of Scion Memorial Park – formerly East Gardens – the public green that was closest to Scion’s body.  
  
(On bright days, when the sun was straight above Brockton Bay’s mist, you could see his body, twitching, just above the waves.)  
  
The church was never empty, but on Sundays it was more than full. Even visiting atheists would turn to the altar to mourn, and hope, for one more higher power.  
  
Even stiff, it wasn’t a long trip. Taylor settled her sleeping bag on the sidewalk leading up to the church. The horizon was more gray than anything else. As she watched, orange injected and rose-pink blushed. This deep in winter, the sunrises lasted long. It was still half-dark when the church goers started to pass her.  
  
Hat off, her ears stung, but it was worth it for bills and dollar coins.  
  
One man grimaced, eyes down, he hid the coin until the last minute.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
A mother with a young daughter, who stared, and tried to teach her kid charity.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Not a quarter of them gave, but before the service began and the church doors shut, she already had enough to buy food until Thursday. The trick, then, was to walk to the sidewalk that approached the church from the other direction while the sermon was going. She’d see new faces when it was over that way. With the same amount again, Taylor thought, she’d have enough to stay in a hostel for a night. If it got colder, she might need to.  
  
“Oh my god, it’s true!”  
  
They looked clean, and warm, dressed in thick coats that were unstained. An old enemy, her face wore a broad smile, and she pulled back her fur lined hood, her face flushed pink. “I’ve got to call Emma, right now.”  
  
“Hello, Julia.” Taylor’s old Trojan-horse friend had the decency not to meet her eyes, where she stood behind Madison. “It’s nice to see you, looking well.”  
  
Did Julia flinch? Was there some shame somewhere in her? Somewhere underneath her collarbone, or at the back of one knee, in a place she’d never noticed before.  
  
(And maybe a dash of fear, too, in the distant background.)  
  
Taylor was too cold and it had been too many weeks since she had run away for her to really _feel_ it. But that didn’t mean she wanted to be harassed, didn’t want Emma and Sophia showing up, or Alan and Zoe.  
  
Madison teased at her, while she folded up her sleeping back and put her backpack on. They even followed her back into the Docks, for a little while.  
  
(Until the streets were narrow, and the brick was stained with age, and the sidewalk was filled with people nearly as dirty as she was.)  
  
She was homeless. She had _nothing_ , and it hadn’t changed a thing. They had launched into old habits with all the enthusiasm of an addict finding a forgotten stash. They were caricatures, they were inhuman.  
  
Taylor couldn’t go back to the church sidewalk, next Sunday. And _then_ there was some anger. _Fuck_. The girls would be sure to check back again. If they were going to get in the way of her donations then there was no point in going.  
  
She reached her alleyway, and took up on the step by the door. Her back had barely touched it when the door swung open, and a boot struck her back, tipping her forward onto her knees.  
  
“You don’t sit here. Don’t come back.”  
  
The door slammed shut.  
  
Slowly, cold muscles picked her back up.  
  
(Her eyes stung, but she wouldn’t cry.)  
  
There were other places, close to Scion, but out from the wind off the sea.  
  
*  
  
 **2**  
  
It had been a week, the money was gone, and something was wrong.  
  
Her leg hurt. She’d sat on something sharp a few days ago and it had pricked at her calf through her coat and through her jeans and drawn blood, and she’d done nothing about it.  
  
Now, in the public bathroom in Weymouth Mall, she could look at it in the mirror. There was an angry red lump where she’d been cut. When she touched it lightning shot through her soul. Even letting her craggy jeans slip back down was fire where they brushed it.  
  
She spent her last ten dollar bill on some antiseptic, instead of hot food.  
  
Outside, the weather was a little colder. There was frost on the ground. She sat on a bench for a while, but it would be stupid to sleep there. Too many people passed through the park, too exposed, and the bench was metal. The cold would sap the life out of you, and you’d wake up dead.  
  
(She didn’t want to go back to the Docks.)  
  
It was back to the Docks. It took her an hour to walk a mile. This time she faced the ocean straight on. She couldn’t go through the Boardwalk, the enforcers wouldn’t let her, but there was a longer way to get to the pier above the ferry port and she followed it to the sea.  
  
She leaned on the railing bordering this particular section of slimy, stained Boardwalk appendix. From here Scion was only visible as a distant golden figure wrapped in a soft glow.  
  
The water around Scion was the deep, dark blue of the Atlantic. A Brockton Bay native, Taylor barely smelled the salt in the air, or the sharpness. These were familiar sights and sensations for her, far more familiar than what the shore had become.  
  
The ferry’s horn screamed from across the bay, interrupting her. Scion’s grave-fog was changeable, but even at its worst it was thin. Today, she could make out the south ferry port clearly, with the skyscrapers of downtown only slightly hazy.  
  
 _What would Dad have given to see the Ferry running again_? She thought the question often. Dad’s lobbying for the Ferry’s reopening had been a fixture of Taylor’s life since her childhood, and its closing down after the riots. Her dad had thought opening the ferry would revitalise tourism, bring money back into the city. Of course, it had been the other way round.  
  
The Boardwalk had once sat on the north coast of the bay. Now it dominated the entire shoreline, travelling clear through, to the distant south side, over miles. There were open air exhibits along the shore front: hawkers, tourists, mourners. Haven’s local headquarters sat plumb in the middle, staring out at the Protectorate Headquarters – itself a good quarter of a mile away from where Scion hovered.  
  
She remembered there had been a time it had glowed underneath an iridescent forcefield, and the night sky had sometimes carried the rainbow light over the tops of buildings, when her mom would drive her to the mall.  
  
Taylor turned away. The forcefield was never on now. Too distracting, too bright, for a city that doubled as a mausoleum.  
  
The gargantuan swell in tourism of the last two years had been to the benefit of most, but not the docks. Shivering, she made her way into the industrial zone, every other step accompanied by a stabbing in her calf.  
  
There were a lot of empty freight containers near the old Dockworker’s association.  
  
Taylor didn’t like to stay here full time.  
  
Coming and going made her too vulnerable, but in the maze at the back, one open container was painted on the inside. With the door closed it would get warmer, the paint acting as an insulator.  
  
(But she never closed the door _all_ the way. Never risked being _trapped_.)  
  
It wasn’t late, but she was tired. Before long it wasn’t cold, but she was shivering, and her leg stung.  
  
She fell asleep.  
  
*  
  
 **3**  
  
Hot.  
  
(Fire.)  
  
There was something burning. She could feel it like she had her finger tip above a birthday candle, but it was nothing she was touching.  
  
It was growing, and it was over _there_. Somewhere.  
  
Cold winds pushed at her phantom finger. Fingers. There had been one and now there was ten, then four, now twenty. She knew it, was certain. She could point to them with her eyes closed.  
  
 _(_ She _pulled_.)  
  
There were hundreds now. They were being pushed by strange winds even while the air in the freight container remained still. A few of the phantom fingertips trailed along rough ground, or touched brick. One felt … leather? Then it vanished.  
  
She followed the sensation, out over the wide lot of the industrial dockland, over wide asphalt lots, past warehouses, into the inbetween land where the places to store the freight gave way to the buildings to pack the people. The streets began to be surrounded by brick buildings, and street lights became dimmer and more sparse. Graffiti went from individual art and tags to uniform gang tags, marking territory.  
  
Time on the street had taught her it was the ABB.  
  
(She was deep in gangland now.)  
  
“You think I don’t kill kids. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill your friends, I’ll kill—“  
  
Taylor jumped back from the street corner she had been about to turn. And regretted it. Her leg buckled under her and she fell on her ass. The world turned to white blind light where her abscess hit the floor.  
  
(She caught the tail end of her own scream as she came back to herself.)  
  
“Try and jump me? Others will learn from you.”  
  
Louder, and closer.  
  
He rounded the corner and she looked up at him, shrinking into her coats, on the floor. He was tall, shirtless. Large tattoos covered his chest from stomach to neck in various designs of dragon, and a metal dragon’s snarl covered his face.  
  
A B-list gang leader, and supervillain, Lung ran the ABB from out of Tokyo Town, where it bordered the Docks. All Taylor knew was that his power made him stronger over a fight and that, though he’d been beaten back by every gang in the city, he’d never been caught or brought in. In a city policed by the world’s strongest hero, that was an achievement that would’ve let him rule anywhere else.  
  
Flames curled up from the teeth of his mask. Strength and fire and growth had always been his schtick, the way she heard it, and what the grave-mist had done to him was unclear. The question was answered as his angry eyes turned dismissive, his understanding clear that she was an interloper not an ambusher.  
  
The fire at his teeth vanished. Instead there poured cold vapor, a frigid wind carrying ice crystals that stretched away into the air.  
  
His hand was steady as he pointed his palm at her.  
  
The temperature dropped, and Taylor’s breath began to appear in the air.  
  
(This was it.)  
  
She closed her eyes and bowed her head. She felt the little creatures that had led her here, and dived into their sensations. She felt legs and saw strange sights in strange colours she couldn’t understand.  
  
(The world was drawn in kaleidoscope, a hundred views.)  
  
There were three or four new points ahead of her. Not burning, they felt like ice cold spring water. And with her eyes closed, she could see herself on the floor, in front of herself.  
  
(Her own eyes opened.)  
  
Lung was staring at his hand.  
  
A man struck Lung in a football tackle, dumping him to the ground. Leather fists muffled the sound as he rained blow after blow on Lung’s face and ribs. On the ground, he span like a gymnast, never still, his knees striking at the villain’s head. He was dressed in a lot of black for a hero.  
  
(She pulled.)  
  
Taylor saw her power action for the first time. Crawling insects burst to life from the ice that spread across the sidewalk, and from the shadow that oozed from the man that had saved her.  
  
They were all distinct. Some had snowflake wings, some eight inky legs like a spider and the stinger of a scorpion  
  
She could feel the heat and the cold in the air where the insects from Lung passed, and the shadows seemed grey and monotone where the insects from the man in leathers looked.  
  
(There was a pain in her temples, and behind her eyes.)  
  
The fight had moved on while she had been lost in the deformed insect senses.  
  
Lung was half-covered in deep blue scales, and lightning sparked from his hands, stabbing out at the man in black. It didn’t seem to do much, turning aside before it hit the other parahuman.  
  
The darkness that spilled from the other guy was heavy, curling around their feet all across the road, but one longer patch, like a smoky tendril, cut through Lung’s middle.  
  
They fought. Lung was strong. And growing taller.  
  
The man in black wouldn’t hold out much longer.  
  
*  
  
 **4**  
  
Centipedes and hawk-wasps and flies separated themselves from the lightning that Lung shot from his fingertips, their bodies the same substance.  
  
Taylor’s headache was building, but she could feel hundreds of them. Thousands. Focusing on the rough sidewalk under her real fingers and on the cold air stinging her nose with each breath helped best. Gradually the world began to come into focus again.  
  
Almost. One lense of her glasses had shattered.  
  
Lung and the other guy were still fighting. They had closed to melee range and were wailing on each other. The other guy’s leathers were ripping, and he seemed to be growing, just like Lung. Darkness continued to boil out of him, but as she watched, a jet of lightning leapt out from the darkness he produced and splashed over Lung’s bright white scales.  
  
He was _copying_ Lung.  
  
Lung was snarling, but it was impossible to make out what he was saying.  
  
She called her bugs to her. And they _were_ hers, she could tell. They didn’t move or flicker as the two fighting parahumans called on the elements that made them up.  
  
(Attack.)  
  
Elemental bugs leapt onto Lung’s skin, biting at hard scales the colour of diamond. Those bugs made of lightning had the most difficulty getting close, and few landed. The shadow, the fire, and the ice were more successful, and she could feel where each one landed.  
  
A few were crushed between the two men, but the bugs were fast.  
  
(The bugs were angry.)  
  
Taylor felt it as they crawled into Lung’s nose, his mouth, his eyes. Stingers stung, and fangs bit, and she didn’t stop them.  
  
Lung ran. Lung always ran. The man in ripped black leathers didn’t move to block him. Lung was fast, and he covered blocks in moments in huge leaps. Her bugs kept biting until she couldn’t feel them anymore. If the insects had disappeared, or if she just couldn’t feel them any more, Taylor didn’t know.  
  
“Thank you for the save.”  
  
Helmet cracked, and costume split at all the seams, she saw dark skin, dark eyes, and a boy not much older than her. She said nothing. Before, smoke had spilled from his helmet, hiding him.  
  
“I don’t think I could have taken him by myself, he was growing a lot faster than me by the end there. These are amazing, by the way.”  
  
He pulled on his own shadow, and a dark insect boiled into existence, and flew to land on his glove. It was like someone had bent her finger the wrong way. She jumped at the sensation, and her leg pressed against the ground. She screamed and spasmed.  
  
“Fuck!”  
  
(Her insects flocked to her like armor.)  
  
“My leg. There’s something wrong with my leg.”  
  
“I’m going to look, OK?”  
  
He was gentle, but it hurt. Her calf looked deformed, like it had mumps. The skin was all angry purple and blue, ringed by a bright red margin.  
  
“Let me call for help. I can help you. I owe you.”  
  
She shook her head. Through clenched teeth she rolled her trousers down and stood up. She was shaky, and ten minutes on the floor was enough that her leg didn’t take her weight right.  
  
“You’re burning up,” he said. “I’m calling a doctor.”  
  
(Her bugs rose into the air)  
  
“No cops. No hospital.”  
  
“I don’t call the cops. I have a guy. He’s discreet.”  
  
The basic costume and his fight with Lung, without any hint of the Protectorate, came together with his young age.  
  
“Are you a villain?”  
  
“I have a doctor who helps people like me, he’s very discreet.” He paused. “I owe you,” he repeated.  
  
“What’s your name?” Taylor asked. Then, “I don’t want to be forced into a gang.”  
  
“I work alone. I don’t have back up, no team, not for a year.” Then he took off his helmet entirely. Shadow poured behind him, and to the sides, hiding the rest of the street. He held out his hand. “I’m Brian.”  
  
Then her leg buckled, and that made the choice for her.  
  
*


	5. [P&P] Mary and the Madonna 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was inspired by Rihaku's take on magical girls in his quests A Simple Transaction (and now a couple of years later we see them again in A Simple Transaction I, on Sufficient Velocity).
> 
> This story is based on the P&P family, and originally I changed all the names out, but it was so thin-veiled that on today's rewrite I've changed them all back. I think that I wrote in the right style for the 1800s, I studied P&P for my A-level English and I've read a lot from that time period tons. But I think that it's too much a barrier to entry, and watching Bridgerton got me looking at this again. I've tried to update the language so it's perfectly readable (at least it seems that way to me), but still 'feels' like it's old fashioned, even though I use modern words where possible.
> 
> Let me know if it's utterly unreadable. I've got three more chapters of this, that I'll update similarly (unless you say it's still too hard to read), and then put in here.

*  
 **Chapter One - the Incarnate Madonna.**  
*

  
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the middle of five children is the luckiest member of any large family.  
  
Mary Bennet was no exception. Rarely troubled by her sisters growing up—her two older sisters occupied by, and occupying in return, her two younger sisters—nor in any way a trouble to her gentleman father, she was of most interest in her youth to her mother, who would direct her like a particularly at-the-elbow servant. Or, she had been, until it had become clear at the tender age of eleven that Mary was destined to be the plainest of her daughters, and therefore worth little further investment.  
  
Consequently, Mary was set up as a figure who might be well-able to chase all her wildest inclinations, to develop a wild disposition, and a fierce streak of independence.  
  
“Mother. Is it not the Madonna of Charity’s reflection that ‘to be endowed with judgement—”  
  
“Oh Mary, you do go on,” said Mrs. Bennet. “Help me find my bonnet or go elsewhere.”  
  
“Mother, the wisdom of the Madonna–”  
  
“–is beyond description, I am sure,” said Mr. Bennet, over the top of his morning periodical. “Let Mrs. Bennet reflect on yesterday’s sermon on Grace before your next, Mary. Perhaps it will help these travails hit her heart less hard.”  
  
The absence of the daughter who most resembled him had made sensible conversation a commodity he rarely enjoyed, Mary knew. Still, even twelve-months was not sufficient to completely remove his delight in those less sensible than himself.  
  
“Mary,” he said, “there is an article in this gazette of particular interest to you.” He turned the newspaper over, showing her a broadsheet spread in a small, black typeface.  
  
“What do you mean, sir?” she asked, on reading.  
  
“Only that we might perhaps hear your thoughts on the conflicts this French man provokes. You have read a great many works, I feel you are ready for the promotion.”  
  
Mary composed herself. “Sir, I know little of strategy, and it seems he has struck the Navy a blow with this blockage, but to war in principle: it is my belief that we ought not to have it. That where borders, or sovereignty, or food, or fellow feeling, or the regulations of treaty allow it, we ought not to have it.”  
  
“Magnificently stated, with a fine and considered list of exceptions. The Madonna of France must be of a similar mind to yourself, for they do nothing to stop him. Perhaps, you shall find yourself in their number before long, hmm?”  
  
Her father was leaping about today, from remark to remark. He loved to take his own meanings from the things his wife and daughters said, and so Mary was always careful to consider what she intended. Though, when in moods like this morning, it was twice as bad, because slow consideration antagonised him as much as anything she might say.  
  
She wasn’t Lizzie, she had not that _quickness_ that he wanted from her.  
  
He tutted at her lack of reply, and turned the page, tapping a finger at a thin column. Overleaf was an article detailing recent events in the British occupation of South Africa. European efforts had fallen into the far parts of the world and conflict between the powers was now affecting the Holy Mission, requiring correction.  
  
“In any case, it is _this_ conflict that I thought might inspire you.”  
  
Mary’s _was_ inspired. To see the Madonnas’ works in the flesh would be a treasure, indeed. The closest any person might come to an Apostle, or the Lord himself, in any manifest form. Even reading what they had done, imagining the splendour and scale of it, was enough that she could almost feel His Grace on her soul.  
  
“The Virtues have resolved the conflict?” she asked.  
  
“Indeed they have, they have solved the issue of Africa in the fashion of King Solomon.”  
  
“I think both we and the French shall all be glad of the peace.”  
  
“You are quite right, Mary. I am sure that peace shall be a balm to those whose houses are now on both sides of the sea.”  
  
Again she struggled to reply. Mary had read a great many sermons on the Madonna’s view of the Holy mission, and she held the problem of theodicy well and truly in hand. She only lacked the memory to pull up the fine words that might make her father sensible of the same understanding. However, before she could make her own approximation, Mr. Bennet had tired of the conversation and he left the room to his library.  
  
Mary turned to her mother.  
  
“Oh Mary, you do fuss me. Kitty, have you found my muslin bonnet? Oh I do so miss my daughters. Jane was so attentive, and Lizzie so lively, and my dear Lydia. They knew just how to manage my nerves.”  
  
Kitty scoffed, while from the library their ageing father called out.  
  
“Mrs. Bennet, if a _Madonna_ should be able to manage your nerves, which have been my friends these past twenty years, I should account it a greater miracle than all the Grace they possess.”  
  
“Oh, my nerves, Mr. Bennet. How you do like to provoke me.” Mary’s mother rushed from the kitchen, past the three bonnets held by the maid for her, her censure of Mary’s father continuing as she prowled the house. It was then that Kitty struck.  
  
“Sister,” she said, “have you heard that Lieutenant Morgrave has returned to Hertfordshire? I had it from our Uncle, who said he dropped by to see Uncle’s clerks these two days past. Only he is no longer Lieutenant Morgrave but Commander Morgrave.”  
  
“I am not sure what interest it is to me, Kitty,” said Mary, sure Kitty would have no idea that this news was of _particular_ interest to her. It was only that Kitty missed their youngest sister Lydia, with whom she had often gossiped about the comings and goings of Meryton. “But he is Commander now? He rises quickly.”  
  
Kitty turned to her with a queer look. Almost wry, and Mary cut her off before she could say whatever it was she might.  
  
“It is as Lady Charity says in her sermons for young women, _‘The earnest wishes and charitable prayer of any’_ —”  
  
“Oh you do go on, Mary,” said Kitty, “I’d think you were a Madonna yourself.” She left the room and swept a well crested Bonnet from the hook beyond the door. “Mama, I have your bonnet, now please let’s go.”  
  
Mary smoothed down her dress while no-one’s eyes were on her. She cleaned her glasses, and swept her hair as well as she might so that it framed her face in two locks. Then she pushed them back under her bonnet because it was terribly vain. But still, when they set out for Meryton, she felt terribly peculiar. _Commander_ Morgrave. Would he still remember her at all?  
  
***** *****  
  
Meryton, in Hertfordshire, was the small town that sat one mile on from their own Longbourn House. In times gone by, with her elder sisters still resident and unmarried, they had often walked into town and Mary with them, so as to take a form of constitutional — physical improvement in a temperate fashion being a fitting preoccupation for young women, Lady Charity often wrote — but that was all long past now, for their mother refused to walk anywhere. Mr Bennet had little mind to refuse his wife anything that she might desire, for reasons of convenience rather than sentiment, and they took the gig over bumpy tracks, to town.  
  
In Meryton, as was usual, they arrived directly at Mr. Phillips’s law office where her aunt, Mrs. Phillips, was waiting.  
  
“Dear sister,” said Mrs. Phillips, “dear nieces, Kitty, Mary.”  
  
Mary smiled, as well as she could. She was used to being improperly greeted second to her younger sisters, and long habit had blunted her feelings to the snub. They murmured polite greetings to their aunt.  
  
“I am very pleased to see you in Meryton again, after such a quick removal by the Bingleys from Netherfield Hall, and with you so reliant on visiting very often. Dear Jane was always so even tempered, it must be a dreadful shock to you for her to vanish so quickly,” she said.  
  
Mrs. Bennet gasped and covered her mouth in a handkerchief which she carried for this purpose, and she looked at Mary and Kitty with arched, high eyebrows, before turning back to her sister.  
  
“A quick removal? A quick removal? Why, I encouraged her to support Lizzie in Derbyshire these past twelve months, but she was reluctant to leave the good company of this country and her dear mother. And, I would have you know it, to anyone who suggests it was a quick removal from our company. Why, I should be shocked to hear anyone call it a quick removal from such pleasant surroundings.”  
  
Mrs. Phillips did not put up a fight, and they quickly turned to other more familiar bickers, and made ready to leave to the dressmakers.  
  
Mary looked around the offices, but the principal object of her desire was nowhere to be seen. In the far corner however, his cousin sat at his desk, diligently at work. Mary had no recourse to ask after the Commander, or even his own health, but he nodded at her when he looked up, with a brief smile and a tug of the hat.  
  
“Come along, Mary,” said Mrs. Bennet, and they left.  
  
On the road outside, Kitty linked arms with her in an unusually familiar gesture. Though, Mary supposed it showed her figure to the greatest effect and let her petticoat catch the most attention with every step, and that was probably reason enough. Mary was quite shocked when after only a few moments silence Kitty spoke up.  
  
“Do you have something you would like to tell me, sister?”  
  
“I have a great many things I would like to discuss with you, of course. Any woman’s mind is best refined by reading, temperance and discussion. Perhaps we might discuss the most recent Sunday Lecture, or I might quote to you from _Psalms_ and we might grow in Grace.”  
  
Kitty looked at her for a moment. “No, not that,” she said, “you shared a look with that scribe in our Uncle’s office. Don’t deny it, I saw you.”  
  
“I did not,” said Mary, promptly. The lie struck at her like a knife. A mortal blow right into the centre of her heart. “Oh sister, I did, but I know what you must think and it is not that.”  
  
Kitty smiled up at her, a great, wide smile, eyes alight. A beautiful smile by anyone’s reckoning, and a familiar toothache for Mary. All the Bennet daughters were blessed with fetching visages, fine figures and fine eyes, excepting Mary.  
  
“It was only that I remembered what you said,” said Mary, “about Commander Morgrave, and I thought that I might convey our congratulations to himself or his cousin.”  
  
“His cousin?” asked Kitty, “I did not know he had a cousin in Mr. Phillips’s office.”  
  
“Did you not think him frequently in Meryton, when in the country? His only living family is here.”  
  
Kitty pushed out her lower lip. “Perhaps I might make his acquaintance,” she said, “now that his star is rising. A Commander is not so far from a Captain, is that right, Mary?”  
  
“That is right,” said Mary, quietly.  
  
She said nothing else, and Kitty was quickly taken by a dress in a shop-front, all thought of Morgrave, and Mary, driven from her mind.  
  
***** *****  
  
They took luncheon at the Hart and Hind, the public house most suited to them, in the centre of Meryton. From their room at the front they could look out on the crossing ways of the town. They took cold meats and several types of bread, and, interestingly, there were olives in oils and strawberries out of season.  
  
“These are very good,” said Mrs. Bennet.  
  
“There are cold boxes that will last forever coming from Rome now, Mr. Phillips says. He says it will alter our habits a great deal, here and abroad.”  
  
It had taken excessively little encouragement from her sister for Mrs. Bennet to buy the expensive fruits, and the cost would certainly be a source of discussion with Mr. Bennet at dinner.  
  
“Well, be that as it may,” said Mrs. Bennet, “but I should like nothing so much as some good blueberries.”  
  
Outside the window, there were the comings and goings of a great number of gentlemen on tan horses. A cart full of pails and crates was being unloaded by a tall boy in simple clothes, and, although the roads were cobbled and the weather wet, there seemed to be more dust on him than mud.  
  
Then a strange, odd fellow popped up at the window, blonde hair under a great top hat, and rapped at the glass with a stick.  
  
“Oh!” said Mrs. Bennet.  
  
“Oh!” said Mrs. Phillips. “Mr. Smith, you are a sort!”  
  
This Mr. Smith tipped his hat at them through the glass with a great smile, then vanished just as suddenly.  
  
“Who is that, Aunt?” asked Kitty. She struggled to look scandalised, but sat taller and coifed her curls. “What peculiar manners he has.”  
  
Mrs. Phillips had no time to answer before came that same rap at the door, and it was flung open. They struggled to rise.  
  
“No, no, please don’t stand on our account. Not such a luminary as Mrs. Phillips,” said the young man.  
  
“Mr. Smith, have you met my sister and her daughters? Mrs. Bennet, Miss Bennet and Miss Kitty Bennet.”  
  
“How do you do,” said Mr. Smith, and his eyes slid over Mary to linger on her sister.  
  
“How do you do,” murmured Mary, with Kitty.  
  
“Mrs. Phillips, I was wandering by and thought I spied you sitting here. I shall never miss the opportunity to thank your dear husband, whose office saved myself a fortune of some several thousand pounds.”  
  
Kitty sat up even more straightly though Mary had not supposed it possible a moment before.  
  
“Oh but where am I,” he continued, “assembled muses, have you had the pleasure of my good friend, Commander Morgrave?”  
  
There was another man in the door, hidden behind Mr. Smith in part, and he stepped in. Perhaps not so handsome as Mr. Smith, but taller, with deeper eyes and dark hair. He was wearing a blue coat that looked very fine.  
  
“Mrs. Phillips.” He nodded his head. “Mrs. Bennet.” His eyes stopped on Mary. “Miss Bennet,” he said.  
  
“Commander Morgrave,” crowed her mother, “Yes, I recall you. I recall you very distinctly dancing twice with Mary. If you are in the country in a week, perhaps you might make a third. Is she not grown into a…” She stumbled slightly, “ A virtuous woman?”  
  
If there was faint red on his face it could not be the equal of the scarlet that surely covered her own. Her mother had never been the most tactful of women, but this was the first time her particular fascinations had been turned toward Mary. It was a surprise to her that she had even noted Mary’s dance card several years previously when Jane and Lizzie were still unmarried.  
  
“It would be a privilege to dance with any Miss Bennet, all are held to be roses of this county,” he said, and he bowed to her, and then Kitty in turn. Even this faint praise was enough. Mary’s heart might be replaced with a hummingbird’s and maintain the same pace.  
  
“Do you see how well he does, Mrs. Phillips?” asked Mr. Smith, “isn’t he a fine sort?”  
  
They had the lively banter of men who had taken many confidences of each other, the sort that surpassed a passing acquaintance.  
  
“Do forgive us,” said the Commander, “he is always very pleased to make your company. Please do give our salutations to Mr. Phillips, and we shall leave you to your luncheon.”  
  
Mrs. Phillips assured them that she would.  
  
“Look at him rush,” laughed Mr. Smith. He took a pause to make his bows, as they left he took a look back at them all. “I fancy there is an Admiral’s daughter he is very keen to meet. The sea makes his manners fine indeed.”  
  
He laughed again, but Commander Morgrave met Mary with wide eyes. He bowed deeply then fled from the room.  
  
Something deep and sick settled in her.  
  
“An Admiral’s daughter,” said Mrs. Bennet, “I am not sure what charms she should have over our Mary, if not for that wretched entail.”  
  
***** *****  
  
Meryton gave way to Longbourn once more, but for Mary there was no peace to be found at home.  
  
She was not a woman given over much to gossip or the pursuit of a good match, but neither was she the sort that might frequently have hopes of an attachment, and this news of Mr. Morgrave’s possible interests was affecting her most severely.  
  
Mary was not Lydia, whose gifts seemed to lie entirely in that charming ten men in five minutes. Nor was she Jane, who, proper in every way, had seemed able to turn any rake’s leer into a gentleman’s sincere attentions, by her sheer enduring goodness. And her excessive beauty, that also. There had been few who would not make their best behaviour to dance with Jane.  
  
Instead, Mary’s particular example had always been Lizzie. Lizzie was her elder sister by two years, the second of the Bennet daughters, and it was not her appearance, or her sociability that Mary wanted to emulate. Of all of them, by a considerable margin, Lizzie had the disposition and manners closest to their father, and for this her father favoured her above all his other daughters.  
  
His interest was not expressed as another father might show it: Lizzie did not receive a great deal many more fine clothes than her sisters, nor a greater allowance. Instead, her father gave Lizzie his time and his company and did not profess it a great burden on himself.  
  
This gave Lizzie, to Mary’s mind, her security in rejecting who she pleased and pursuing who she wished. This freedom, in return, had given her the ability to act how she wished to act, and for her it had worked out best of all.  
  
Lizzie had only sought the most story-like attachment, without interest in other more worldly considerations, and if any in their family had displayed the qualities that God looked for in his Madonna it was Lizzie.  
  
She had found her match, trusting in her own judgement and her own confidence, and then earnestness had secured her worldly fortune, too.  
  
Was it so wrong to want what she had seen was possible? Mary had met only one man in her life who perhaps excited her thoughts of attachment in this fashion. Mr. Morgrave had been an interruption in her life for these past five years, since his first escape from the Admiralty. He appeared and disappeared from their assemblage like the phases of the moon, and to Mary was practically as mysterious.  
  
She did not frequently attract the conversation of gentlemen. Commander Morgrave was the only man who, as a naval officer, knew quite so much about the Madonna as she did. The only man who would engage her on the topic and not turn away when she was become too enthusiastic.  
  
It had been almost two years since he had last been in the county, before even her sisters were married. She was keen to keep his good opinion, to hold his interest. Perhaps there might be some new musical sermon from the Maid of Angers that he had missed, but how might she find a way to play for him, or even _talk_ to him, for more than the length of one interrupted luncheon?  
  
“Ow, Mary!”  
  
Quickly, she worked to untang the brush from Kitty’s hair where a knot had defeated her attempt to pull through it.  
  
“Too rough, Mary. Your mind is elsewhere.” Kitty turned and took the brush from her hands, pulling a bunch forward so that she could see it clearly in the mirror and do it herself. “You have been far too glum since Meryton. Why are you being so tiresome?”  
  
“It was Lady Temperance who wrote–”  
  
“Oh, not a Madonna’s sermon, Mary. If that were the occupation of your mind, I should not have been able to speak for these last twenty minutes.” Kitty turned to her. “Now you are miserable, and I would have you come out with it.”  
  
Mary would not.  
  
“We are to have the first Assembly ball in a week, I am so worried that we should not have time to choose a dress that will be worthy of the fashion. You know how much importance a woman should place on her dress. If she has no concerns about her shoes, or her parasol.”  
  
Mary gave her views on the importance of fashion for five minutes. Kitty smiled wryly at her conclusion.  
  
“Well, there you are, Mary. I see you are not entirely out of sorts, though I would not be as fastidious as you are for all the money in England.”  
  
Mary sighed. She took the brush from Kitty and finished helping her with her hair. Before long, she was ready to wish her good night. With a saucer and candle, Mary made her way to the door.  
  
“Sister,” said Kitty, from her dresser, “I know you do not hold fashion in the same esteem as I do but I hope you shall consider your dress at least as much as you consider your recital when we next dance.”  
  
“I do not play for my own benefit, Kitty. I should consider my pieces a great deal more than my dresses.”  
  
“As you say, sister,” said Kitty, “only, your figure looks best sat at the piano, and I should think _that_ will heighten your charms over an Admiral’s daughter more than any proper composition. That will be the key to your success more than any of your complicated pieces when Aunt Phillips invites the Commander and his friend, as I have asked her to do.”  
  
Mary’s eyes were as wide as a carp’s.  
  
“Please mind the door.”  
  
Mary left in a hurry, not daring to look back at Kitty’s expression. She was too sharp, entirely too sharp.  
  
***** *****  
  
It was just over a week, in fact, before the first assembly ball of the rural season. They attended Meryton once more, and dined once with a party of twenty at Sir Lucan’s, with the pleasure of their Uncle and Aunt’s company. However, of Commander Morgrave they saw no sign.  
  
Mary kept her own company as much as she could, and her time was filled with recital. Commander Morgrave was given to humour but Mary found, try as she might, that she could not master comedy on the piano, it was entirely too mortifying and too much beyond her own proper character to sing. Accordingly, she turned to those other elegant and dignified composers that might most arouse his admiration.  
  
She practiced the ballads of Moore, that most exemplary figure, and the songs of Storace and Diblin, which would not overcome her voice. Her capstone, her feather, was to be Handel for whom she believed Commander Morgrave held a very avid fondness.  
  
If her practice didn’t sound too spectacular on their home pianoforte then she was confident that her ability would equal her ambition on the grand piano, in the better acoustics of the Assembly Hall.  
  
Eventually the day came. Mary did not _exactly_ heed Kitty’s advice on dresses but, as they took the carriage to the ball, if she looked more fine and elegant than she had last year it was not entirely the result of chance.  
  
The assembly was a grand building, not privately held, that was contracted for seasonal gatherings by the principal people around the town. It was the place where Mary had met a Mr. Morgrave at her debut some years early, where her sisters had met their husbands, and the place which Mr. Bennet detested, to his own great enjoyment.  
  
“Hurry, hurry, Mrs. Bennet. The sooner we should be introduced, the sooner we might prepare to receive those who arrive at a less punctual moment of greater convenience to themselves.”  
  
“Mr. Bennet, you are a funny sort,” said Mrs. Bennet. This was a common remark for Mrs. Bennet, for whom the advantage of twenty-five years of marriage had not proven sufficient to form any meaningful understanding of her husband and his character.  
  
They were not as early as Mr. Bennet feared. They were introduced then quickly established themselves as a leading sort of family. En masse, they spoke with the mayoralty, Sir Lucan, Mr. Short of Longhouse Hall, and anyone else with whom the family had known for a great deal of time.  
  
As the first assembly of the season, there were younger daughters stepping out for the first time, and making their first formal introductions to society at large. For this reason, it took much longer than usual for dinner to be served. However, by the time they were seated, though she had looked from the corners of each eye, there remained no sign of Commander Morgrave. He had not come.  
  
By pudding, Mary was still and quiet. The gentleman who had been seated next to her had turned away early, talking to two on the opposite side of the table.  
  
“... any in a red coat, or blue, should be fine for myself to dance with. I would consider that enough success for me tonight, Miss Lucan. Though my sister may find herself more particular.”  
  
It became apparent to Mary that she was expected to respond, by her sister’s expectant pause, but whatever Kitty had intended to needle her with was not quite so certain. Mary smiled and took a decided bite of pudding.  
  
Miss Lucan tittered, and her sister stared at her.  
  
“Are you well?” asked Kitty.  
  
“I am quite well,” said Mary, “excuse me.” She rose from the table, but this was not quite so shocking in the countryside as it might be in town, as she was long known to the company.  
  
She left toward the rooms that served as bathrooms just outside the hall, so that she might compose herself. She had worked for a week in service to her unbecoming, coquettish plot. She had neglected sermons and practice of any worthwhile accomplishment, other than the piano that might further her pursuit of this man. And, worse, it was all for nothing.  
  
Mary was not yet twenty-one, and despite all her reading on virtues, and the solemnity that she tried to hold, the disappointment wrote itself across her in sharp pangs, so that she was barely looking elsewhere than the floor when she collided with a party, at the entryway to the hall.  
  
“Miss Bennet,” said he, and of course, it was Commander Morgrave. He could know nothing of her paroxysms and her passions, he only saw that she was leaving, and he stepped back to let her by. He had the most easy and pleasing manners even now.  
  
Mr. Smith was with him, as might be expected, but though there were two gentlemen in their party, that was not the extent of them. With them were three ladies, one golden haired, one red, and one with hair darker than her own.  
  
The pause lingered; lingered longer still.  
  
“Commander Morgrave,” she said, after a moment more.  
  
“Miss Bennet, you have met Mr. Smith.” The blonde man bowed. “May I introduce his sisters, Miss Smith and Miss Hannah Smith?” The woman with blonde hair and the woman with redder hair curtsied in turn as Mary responded similarly. “Here with our mutual acquaintance, Miss Parkstock, of Portsmouth.”  
  
Miss Parkstock made her greetings, and Mary responded in turn, but could not come to look at her in full, and at the earliest opportunity fled from the introduction.  
  
It was as she had frequently read, and this past week forgotten, that plans dishonestly made came to dishonest resolutions. She gave up her designs. She gave up her life, her heart, and all her prospects, and made an earnest entreaty that she should live to be old, alone and never forsake all the more sober joys of life again.  
  
Before too long, however, a shortage of partners encouraged her to dance, and she gave up her vow. She undertook the third, and the fourth. At the far end of the line, Commander Morgrave danced them all. He danced equally with the sisters of Mr. Smith and their acquaintance from Portsmouth, until the final of the half, where he took a second dance with Miss Parkstock, and again a great wrench cut through her.  
  
During the pause he approached her where she sat, by means of their mutual acquaintance. Miss Lucan, who had been talking to her, turned to the opposite corner as if the paintings there had suddenly ensorceled her.  
  
“I was pleased to see you dancing,” said Commander Morgrave, after a moment.  
  
“And I you,” said Mary, “Miss Parkstock is an uncommonly fine partner.”  
  
He hesitated. “She is. She is,” he said, “I think you should like her, on further meetings. She possesses very proper sensibilities. Yes.”  
  
“And should I expect further meetings?” asked Mary, “I should like that very much.” She took a drink at that moment, and supposed that it would help the question resemble an entirely reasonable enquiry.  
  
He dipped his head to her. “Yes. You may expect to meet her again, I suspect.”  
  
“Is she staying long with the Miss Smiths?”  
  
“Miss Bennet…” he said.  
  
Mr. Smith strode over, calling for Commander Morgrave, before he could continue. The blonde gentleman slapped one hand on his shoulder. “Miss Bennet,” he said, with a bow.  
  
“I shall play, presently, gentlemen, if it might please you,” she said, suddenly, the intention resurging before she could check herself.  
  
“Excellent,” said Mr. Smith, nonplussed, and Commander Morgrave smiled at her.  
  
They made their excuses – Mr. Smith explaining the reason for his interrupting – and strode over to talk with a gentleman by the fire, Mary watching Mr. Smith making introductions. Was Commander Morgrave more animated as she watched him, for having talked to her, or was that only her hopes?  
  
Still, it had soothed something within her.  
  
She would play what she had practiced, pieces that he ought to like very much, and it would impress on his heart the deep understanding of him that she carried. Communicate with him through the recital in a way that she never could in their hurried conversations at balls, and those busy dinners which they sometimes attended on the same day.  
  
Poised to be the final recital before the second half, Mary sat at the piano. She played her first song, and then her second: simpler than she would often perform and more jolly. Far more of a circle than she expected gathered around her and covered her view of the hall. Amongst those faces at the front she could not find Commander Morgrave, and supposed he must be hidden, perhaps to the best view of her, somewhere behind.  
  
She gathered momentum. She played two more songs, and sang until the words gave way to her final piece. The Handel.  
  
It was devilishly tricky. She exerted all the talent she possessed and what skill her many years of practice allowed her, and still it was not the rendition that she had hoped for. Much as on the pianoforte. The acoustics had not been the problem.  
  
The grand piano did not lift her higher, it did not hide those bars where the reach was too far, or offer more quickness on those passages which demanded a staccato celerity. Instead, the piano only magnified those flaws that she had found at home, so that all might hear them.  
  
Some in her audience turned to conversation, and through the gap she saw Commander Morgrave.  
  
If she might only see appreciation on _his_ face. If she could see that _he_ heard the music that she imagined lived within her soul, rather than the music that she was trapped playing then it would be ok. It would be enough. It would impress her love upon his heart.  
  
Commander Morgrave turned away. He looked down at Miss Parkstock, and she looked up at him. Mr. Smith came to stand beside him, and the three of them left toward the entry hall. All of them were smiling. They cut a fine figure, and Commander Morgrave did not look back for Mary. He did not seem to hear her at all.  
  
A moment more and they were gone. Late to arrive, early to leave.  
  
The song dragged, her fingers stalling halfway through the note.  
  
Those closest to her turned. Her father stepped up to the far end of the piano, she had not seen him there, straight ahead of her.  
  
“Mary…?” he asked.  
  
“It is … it is only that I…” He was looking at her with great concern. “I am doing it no credit, sir.”  
  
Mary turned to look at the puzzled faces of those in the front. She could not meet their eyes. “Forgive me the stumble, I will play something simpler to finish.”  
  
She had nothing simple. She could not play those two short pieces again, but the silence was building and already her fingers were moving.  
  
What it was she didn’t know. At first she was slow. She put down what she had expected, and what she had seen, and let it through, but this was not who she was or who she had wanted to be. She had seen many examples of greater women than herself, in famous Madonna, in beautiful sisters and in younger women from Portsmouth, and this she played too. Most of all, she saw herself as she ought to be, beyond this moment, beyond this pain, and her fingers sped over ivory and the music rolled out.  
  
It built, and built, and soon she did not know what she was putting down only that it was flowing. Only that it was living in the piano and sounding out. It built up against her, and ran around, and if there were other people in that hall, she didn’t know them.  
  
The song layered upon itself, and there was only the music, filling her up until every corner of her soul, every fibre of muscle, and every drop of blood was full of it, like a flower bending under the weight of morning dew. She felt that she might burst, that she might explode, but never that she might stop, she could not stop.  
  
It compressed, it condensed. Distilled star-stuff and hundred-proof song, it combusted, came a-fire, and stayed kindling. Burning glory, in every part of her being. The song stopped, the piano quieted, and the assembly was completely still.  
  
All the gentlemen were bowing, all the women in a deep curtsy.  
  
Only her father dared to look up at her, over the piano that had transformed her.  
  
“My daughter,” he said, in wonderment. “Madonna.”  
  
***** ****


	6. [P&P] Mary and the Madonna 2

***  
Chapter 2 - Illuminating Grace  
***  
  
The next morning found Mary looking at herself in the mirror. She looked completely normal, her face and hair exactly as it had always seemed, and thoroughly different to the night before. While asleep, the burning of His Grace in her skin and soul had banked into a single ember, quiet, ready to come to life, and the changes to her appearance had vanished.  
  
To call the power back into life was simplicity itself. Coursing fire, sleeting snow, His Grace poured through every vein and artery until it condensed, compressed and burst from her in glory. Her reflection turned to light, shining out across the room so that she could not see herself, for a moment.  
  
When it dimmed, she was transformed, entirely different. Her hair was midnight black, and her eyes the bright blue of the sea on a summer day. Her skin was smooth, and clear, and if any blemish or pimple had ever existed then there was now no trace of it. She had a fine colour to her, and the proportions of her face were more pleasing.  
  
Jane had long been the most beautiful of the Bennet sisters, but no longer, she must give way. Each part of Mary had been remade to contrast and highlight each other part of her countenance, and so magnify it.  
  
It was not only her appearance. The thick glasses that she had worn for the last dozen years now muddled her sight. Speaking, her voice held the melody of song, and her steps felt lighter and more graceful. Her vigor and poise was that of a ballerina long trained.  
  
Mary had always known that the Madonna were made _more_. Where they were deficient they were made great, where they were great they were made _superior_ , but she had never seen a Madonna, never heard one speak or seen their workings. They were few and rare, and now _she_ was one. It was an honour she could never deserve, and had only imagined in her most fevered youthful dreams.  
  
Surely, it was not to be abused. She let the grace pouring through her slow and cease until it could no longer sustain itself and evaporated from her into the air, and the fittings of her room. Did her room seem a little more grand and rich than it had last night?  
  
The Glory left her skin as light left the land when clouds cover a sunny sky and leave a country cool and dark. Then, like focusing on the faint reflection in a window pane rather than the view beyond it, in an instant, her face was her own again.  
  
Downstairs, her family were all at breakfast.  
  
They all turned to look at her when she entered, family and servants alike. Her mother and Kitty rose, awkwardly.  
  
“Lady… Mary,” said Mrs. Bennet, “but what has happened, you look yourself again? Has it left you?”  
  
“No, Mamma, only I thought I ought not to have the– His–” she paused, “I thought I ought to look myself at home.”  
  
“Very good, Mary,” said Mr. Bennet, “have a seat here.” He pointed to the seat at this right hand.  
  
Mary sat and took breakfast, but the room was silent. No one was sure how to speak to her.  
  
“I thought, perhaps,” said Mary, “that I might use your library, Papa, this morning.”  
  
“Very good,” he said. “If it pleases you.”  
  
Mrs. Bennet set her teacup down too hard. “Miss... Lady. Mary, you cannot mean to spend the day inside? No, we must go to Mr. Evans at the Vicarage, then the Mayor and all the foremost houses of Meryton. Mrs. Short was not at the assembly yesterday, and oh, Lady Lucan would so wish to dine with us this evening I am sure. We must write to your sisters, to make an event of it. Oh, say that we might throw a dinner for Mary, Mr. Bennet, I hope?”  
  
“I am certain I have no objection to it,” he said.  
  
“Kitty,” said Mary, “don’t you have a suggestion as to how I might spend my day? Everyone else has spoken, and you are normally first.”  
  
Kitty did not look at her. “No,” she said, then, “may I be excused?” She did not wait to be answered but stood and left.  
  
“Oh, pay her no mind,” said Mrs. Bennet, cracking an egg with her spoon. “She is only jealous.” But Mary was a Madonna now, and surely that meant she should be as the Apostles. She should be sympathetic and kind to her most childish sister.  
  
“I will go and speak to her,” said Mary.  
  
Kitty was dressing herself in the hall and, as Mary came near, she pulled on her shoes and coat and stepped out into the gardens. Mary was left racing to catch up.  
  
Kitty was fast. Mary finally caught up to her in the garden nearest the gate to Longbourn House, Kitty was stood by the cherub fountain. The little Eros had water spilling from his mouth, into a bowl a foot below him and his wings were spread wide. Kitty was looking at it intently with her back to Mary, and did not turn, though Mary was not quiet.  
  
“Kitty,” said Mary.  
  
“Sister,” she said, “do you need me?”  
  
Mary did not know what to say. Kitty never responded well to her remembered passages, or the essays of those most famous Madonna in London and in Rome, nor Mary’s own muddled attempts at theology; least of all when she was actually upset.  
  
It was tempting, to reach for the Grace. Her mind felt quicker, in that other state. Not more intelligent, or altered in character, more it felt as if her best ideas would come to her more easily and confidently, it felt as if she was refreshed, and inspired.  
  
“Why aren’t you happy for me?” asked Mary.  
  
“I am exceedingly pleased for you,” she snapped. “Whoever said I wasn’t?”  
  
Mary hesitated. “I know perhaps that I have never been the quickest, or the prettiest, or the most sociable woman. I do not know why I was chosen, but I hope you will not hate me for it. I… have always known that you were better than I, in all the ways that the world considers me deficient, and this … _change_ doesn’t alter my opinion on that.”  
  
Kitty spun, her eyes were red, the hem of her sleeve stained wet.  
  
“You think I am purely jealous of you, is that it? That you are Madonna now and I am not. I am _angry_ , Mary, because you are _leaving_ me here.”  
  
“I am not going anywhere.” Mary’s eyes were wide, a deer in the lamplight.  
  
Kitty laughed. “There are not many Madonna in rural Hertfordshire, Mary. Not even many in London. You shall be gone before the week is out.”  
  
Mary was quiet.  
  
“Oh, just go, will you? The first pilgrim is here, in any case.” Beyond the hedges of the fountain garden, there was the fading sound of a horse’s hooves on the path. She had not noticed it at first. “Please,” said Kitty, “I shall be alright when I come back, this is only a momentary affliction.”  
  
Mary had nothing to say to that. She lacked the gift of expressing herself in the way that other people did. After a few seconds more, she returned to the house.  
  
***** *****  
  
There was a dark mare being led around the corner of the house when she came in sight of the door again, which was shut. Mary turned to enter via the lower door to the gardens. She would avoid the visitor, whoever they were, she would avoid it all. She would not remove herself from Hertfordshire and she would not receive guests.  
  
Halfway along the path, a servant hurried over the stone path that bordered the country house to her in haste.  
  
“Mistress, Mrs. Bennet sent me, there’s a man here to see you, misstress.”  
  
“Please tell Mamma, and Mr. Evans, should it be the vicar, that I have taken ill with a headache and must rest.”  
  
“Begging your pardon, miss, only it’s not Mr. Evans the vicar, it’s a young man of the Navy.”  
  
Mary looked at the walls of the house as if she might fix upon who it was behind them. She picked up her skirts in one hand and hurried on. “Tell Mamma I shall be right there.”  
  
Upstairs in her bedroom, she quickly took in and straightened her hair, and dress, which the wind had disturbed before hurrying down to the parlour. Rushed, she considered only the usual, common matters of her appearance: her hair, her clothes, her glasses. Whether to appear as herself ordinarily or extraordinarily was not yet a choice she was accustomed to.  
  
In the parlor were Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and Commander Morgrave. The commander looked very tall, and very fine, stood by the mantlepiece. Mr. Bennet was looking at him oddly, but Mrs. Bennet was all smiles.  
  
“Papa, Mamma,” said Mary, “Commander Morgrave.” She gave a small curtsy, but he had come entirely alone it seemed, and her throat felt tight.  
  
“Miss Bennet,” he said, “I hope you will forgive me coming uninvited.”  
  
“Of course,” she said, “of course.”  
  
“Well! Mr. Bennet,” said her mother, “I recall, I must discuss with you the dinner that we have not yet discussed. Let us discuss it, outside, shall we? Outside.”  
  
“Mary?” asked Mr. Bennet. She offered him her smallest smile and he threw up his arms. “Very well!” he said. “Very well! Let us go and discuss this dinner, as we have not discussed dinners in the past twenty years.”  
  
Once alone, Commander Morgrave stepped very close to her, and they sat together on the chaise longue.  
  
“I am very sorry that I left so early, yesterday,” he said.  
  
“It is no matter.”  
  
He was fixed on her, and he continued. “When I heard of what occurred that evening, I was very sorry to have missed it. It seemed to me a sign. That of all women you are the most perfect, most blessed and most vital connection any unworthy man might wish to meet. It confirmed to me, that a connection with any other person would be inferior, and I might follow my heart as I wished to follow it. This sign assured me of that.  
  
“Only say the word, that my feelings are unequal and unreturned and I shall depart and leave you with my fondest wishes, but otherwise let me know and I would most ardently and emphatically wish to spend the rest of our days together, in whatever palace or cathedral they come to build for you.”  
  
Mary was overcome. This completion of her most desirous wish and closest happiness was too overwhelming, and she returned all of his professions and expressed that his wishes were very much the same as her own. The happiness of these professions sustained them for several minutes.  
  
“I am the happiest man that ever lived,” said Commander Morgrave, “only I thought you should look rather different, I have never seen a Madonna, but I had heard it a remarkable transformation.”  
  
Mary stood. It came easier now, the feeling. First the spark, and the dropping away of the world to allow in a furious flood of some mystery, perhaps the Grace itself, until she was saturated in every pore with golden light and sunrise colours. Then the drop-away under its own weight, and crystallisation of that power into some other state, then combustion and the steady burning. Its spiritual warmth radiated out from her, like a fire on a cold winter day.  
  
It was telling now, how lesser she felt without it. Like she was only now comfortable in her body, for the first time, all her joints and tissues in alignment for the first time.  
  
“You are the most amiable woman I have ever seen,” said Commander Morgrave.  
  
Her future was secure, her ambitions were fulfilled, her happy-ending come, better even than Lizzie’s. Her story was over, as with those sisters before her.  
  
***** *****  
  
Mr. Bennet was quick to give his confirmation, ‘ _I should no longer deny you anything, you whose virtues have been proven to be so much greater than my own_ ’, and then it was cake and tea, and celebration. Kitty was called inside and gave her own congratulations, and Commander Morgrave, who in private she might now call William, said that it must be time for him to leave, for he had some urgent persons to inform. Although quick to leave, he stressed that he would be back the next morning as soon as he could visit, in order to plan their marriage.  
  
For all that this proposal was the more common of the two life-altering events of significance in the past twenty-four hours of Mary’s life it was the one which most occupied her, and Mrs. Bennet, too.  
  
The bell came at the door.  
  
“Who in heavens could that be?” asked Mr. Bennet, to the servant’s call for them, for it was no-one with whom they had an acquaintance and so might be conveyed inside. A moment later he called for Mary, and the other Bennets came with her.  
  
At the door were two Catholic nuns. Both of them were shockingly young, with great wooden crucifixes resting over their habits, and a shawl covering their hair: the coif, Mary recalled.  
  
“My daughter, Miss Bennet,” said Mr. Bennet.  
  
Mary made polite introductions, and professed she was much flattered by their appearance, but that she was confused that nuns should arrive so quickly, in this Anglican land.  
  
“Madonna,” said one, demurely, with a deep curtsy, “I flatter myself, that all denominations should venerate those who His Holy Ghost has settled upon, in that apostolic tradition.”  
  
Mary was insufficient to the task of theological debate with a nun, so she offered what general wisdom she could. “In point of His holy mysteries, the idea that Madonna might be seen to be part of the body of each Church is not wholly new, and is well expressed. Madonna may be considered apostles of the modern day.”  
  
It seemed to her a good point, but she recognised the look that the nun shared, and the tight smile on her father’s face. Though she didn’t know why, she had missed the mark again.  
  
“Very good, Mary,” said Mr. Bennet, after a moment. “Please, be welcome.” He stepped to one side, and Mary followed him.  
  
“Excuse me, sir, but we have been sent on Holy Mission, so that Lady Mary may be welcomed into the Madonna, if you’ve no objections.”  
  
“I should never object to anything which I do not understand,” said Mr. Bennet.  
  
The young nuns hurried down the stairs to the carriage they had arrived in. It was a phaeton, a racing carriage more suited to young Gentlemen with too much money and too few responsibilities, which seemed a very queer choice for the nuns indeed.  
  
From the foot of the seat, they drew out a bag that clinked with the telltale sound of glassware. One nun drew from it a level, a telescope, and a number of other peculiar devices. Quickly they set them to task on the lawn, in some strange manner of preparation, that might not have been out of sorts before a lecture at the Royal Society.  
  
“Sister Dawn,” said the first nun, the telescope to her eye. “Quickly now, quickly. The clouds are moving very fast.”  
  
Mr. Bennet seemed as perplexed as Mary herself was. Sister Dawn had a glass beaker in her hand. It contained a clear liquid, until the nun shook it, whereupon it turned a brilliant blue. She popped the cork, and poured the whole solution into the ground. Very little happened, excepting that the nuns turned to prayer. Heads bowed, they clutched their crucifixes and muttered occult latin.  
  
Mary felt very much that she ought to bow her head, too, but seeing that Mr. Bennet was walking down the steps to them she abandoned the effort and followed.  
  
There was a smoky tendril rising from the wet gravel, it climbed into the sky quickly, spreading, and disappearing. Except that…  
  
There was a blue sheen in the air, wide, thin and flat. Hardly there, except when you turned your head at a peculiar angle. It arced up and out of sight, through the clouds and into the distance.  
  
Very shortly, there came a figure from that same point. A dot quickly grew to a human figure. Her every step taking her miles, the sun behind her, a woman walking in the sky.  
  
In scant moments she stepped out from the heights and onto the gravel, with a crunch.  
  
The sisters curtsied, far more deeply than they had for Mr. Bennet and herself.  
  
“Lady Unction,” they said, softly.  
  
“Stand daughters, stand.”  
  
They stood, and Mary realised she had bowed too. There was a pressure weighing on her, and it was difficult to breathe.  
  
Lady Unction kissed each nun gently on each cheek. Her accent was vaguely French, her manner of dress simple and orthodox. She wore a habit not unlike the nuns, but of a deepest blue. More of her dress was difficult to notice, for the woman was Eve, beauty beyond beauty, as far beyond Mary as she stood now as Mary was beyond her own self when untransformed.  
  
This was not Mary’s singular observation, her own unique preference that she had not until now known. The nuns who were familiar with her dared not turn their faces towards the Madonna, as if she was the midday sun, and her father besides her was shaken, wobbling as if he might fall in the frailest breeze.  
  
 _She is in every way ideal_ , thought Mary, of the exquisite delicateness of the Madonna’s features. Her particulars were unimportant to the image, they were not the _how_ of her beauty. She was a vessel through which unending poured, from some higher realm. In fact, without the Grace that thundered through her like a waterfall, the blue fractures that cut across Lady Unction’s skin – like a vase that had been smashed and then repaired with gold, in the style of the furthest East – would turn the stomach.  
  
“Mary,” she said, in that sing-song accent. “Mary. Let me see you.” The Madonna swept towards her, and took her in a light embrace, and kissed her on each cheek. “A new Madonna is a cause for celebration, of His goodness and His Power. _Dieu est bon._ ”  
  
Lady Unction turned to her father. A nun supplied his name, for he was still quite shaken. “Ah. Mr. Bennet, what joy, what glory, to have raised a daughter for the Lord.”  
  
He was uncharacteristically slow. “I should hope…” he said. “I should believe my own contribution quite small.”  
  
The Madonna laughed, though it was unclear why to Mary. “Shall we?”  
  
Mr. Bennet invited her inside. By this point, her mother was trembling at the doorway, Kitty beside her.  
  
“Sisters,” said Lady Unction, “make ready, won’t you?” She held a closed fan in her left hand, and she pointed it in the direction of the trade door.  
  
Her Father and the Madonna ascended into the house. At the entry, Lady Unction turned back to where Mary still stood. “Come along, Mary,” she instructed.  
  
In the parlour, the family sat with the Madonna and took tea. The famous Lady Unction in Longbourn House! It took two dismissals before the servants were able to lower their eyes, too overcome by the great Madonna’s presence.  
  
Lady Unction took the teacup and sat very properly, a classical statue. She seemed a portrait, painted in full, while the world around her was merely sketched. Like a portrait, her smile was unmoving and she did not seem inclined to speak. Despite her station, and the alacrity of her arrival, it seemed to fall to the Bennets to start in a way that overthrew the proper notion of precedence.  
  
It was a lapse easily forgiven. Though Madonna, Lady Unction was still French.  
  
“Was the journey to your Ladyship’s pleasing?” asked Mrs. Bennet.  
  
“It was very little exertion, thank you.” She took another sip, and did not return the compliment. This pause continued for a few minutes.  
  
“It is an honour to receive your Ladyship,” said Mr. Bennet, “only direct us, as you please, and we shall be happy to oblige whatever business you have with Mary.”  
  
Lady Unction inclined her head slightly. “I shall trespass on your time only a little, in fact my ‘business’ is in this moment concluded.”  
  
Mrs. Bennet rose and sat. Mary blinked. Without her glasses, she had nothing to fiddle with in a moment of surprise. “So soon?” she asked. She had expected… something. Anything.  
  
Lady Unction’s luminous blue eyes were fixed on Mary. Though she had said little she did not _seem_ disinterested. She was fixed on Mary like a red kite might fix upon a dove.  
  
“My office,” said Lady Unction, “is the inspection and instruction of new Madonna on behalf of our holy order. My Charismata, or Accomplishments as you might say, are well suited to this, by the grace of God.”  
  
“Instruction?” asked Mary.  
  
The Madonna inclined her head. “I am certain,” she said, “you are my sister.”  
  
She placed her teacup to one side and stood. She came to Mary, and leaned to kiss her on one cheek, then the other, then the first again. “I shall warmly share of your arrival in Rome, and look forward to our meeting again. Direct the sisters to any particular concerns, Mary, until we meet again.”  
  
Mrs. Bennet sought to get her Ladyship to stay, and Mr. Bennet stood to see her off, but Mary remained seated, too long. Rome! Kitty was right. How would she leave England, what purpose could drive her from England? Why would God beatify her in Hertfordshire to then send her away? And there was Morgrave to consider, of course.  
  
“Your Ladyship, must I head there so quickly? I am engaged to be married.”  
  
Lady Unction laughed for a moment, but Mary’s face was perfectly composed, and she stopped sharply on look at Mary’s face. “Oh, dear sister. You are the Lord’s bride now, what need do you have to marry? Do not fret, you are free of that concern now, you are perfectly safe. Do not tarry on his account, a letter will be sufficient.” She bowed to Mary, and Mary curtsied, though her heart had not settled.  
  
“I thank you for your visit,” said Mr. Bennet.  
  
“And I thank you for your hospitality.”  
  
They followed her to the steps of the house again, quickly the housekeeper and the butler were with them, and the faces of downstairs servants appeared from around the corner of Longbourn house, all decorum placed aside.  
  
“Might we fetch your attendant nuns?” asked Mrs. Bennet, “and their–” her mother’s words failed her, but she mimed shaking something with her hand.  
  
Lady Unction smiled. “I know my way.”  
  
Mary steeled herself. “I…”  
  
“Of course, you must come by London. I know Lady Lamia will require your obeisance and your establishment first. You English and your Church. Worry not, Protestant or Catholic, we are all one in the order we share.” She leaned towards Mary, quite conspiratorially. “Do not let her hold you up too long, I am sure you will find better employment for your Accomplishment in Rome than London.” She laughed. A tinkling laugh, like sleigh bells. “I must behave myself.”  
  
She turned towards a now clear blue sky and took a step up, onto thin air. “ _Au revoir_ , Mary, and God bless you, until we meet in the coming months.”  
  
Mary watched the Madonna ascend. Each step seemed to carry her further and further, as if the stair itself was moving faster and faster. Before ten steps she was beyond the boundaries of the park, before twenty she was only a speck in the far distance, and then she was gone, lost amongst the grey sky.  
  
“Lord preserve us,” said Mrs. Bennet, “A Madonna at Longbourn House. Lady Lucan will never believe it, a Madonna, here!” The presence of her daughter did not seem to satisfy the criterion, it seemed to Mary. Mrs. Bennet passed Mary in a rush and took Kitty by her sleeve, pulling her into the house. Kitty had not been in the parlour, Mary realised, she had stayed outside since their talk in the morning.  
  
“Well, what a morning, Mary, yes. I must thank you for the excitement. I am almost afraid of what the afternoon must bring us. Do not speak to me of the evening.” Mr. Bennet patted her shoulder gently as he passed back into the house. “Do make sure to write,” he said, “and I will charge your mother to encourage my quick reply.”  
  
They expected her to go, that very moment. Mary looked out at the empty sky, her home behind her. After a short pause she took to her room, and closed the door.  
  
***** *****


	7. [P&P] Mary and the Madonna 3

***  
Chapter 3 - London Calling  
***  
  
The late afternoon found Mary in her Father’s library, where he did not often tolerate company. On this occasion, he said little at her intruding, and seemed inclined to only glance at her as often as he turned his page.  
  
Their peace should have been sacrosanct, and would have been for any persons usually found in Longbourn house. They were not disturbed until a knock came at the door, and, in her habit and headdress, one of the sisters stepped through, without encouragement.  
  
She gave a small curtsy.  
  
“Miss Bennet,” she said, “the servants have been most helpful, but, begging your pardon, your maid does not feel she has the right to decide what dresses and personal things you would be disposed to pack.”  
  
“You are packing my effects? What on earth for?” asked Mary.  
  
Mr. Bennet closed his book. He looked at each of them from under his eyebrows, and made from the room.  
  
“I shan’t go anywhere,” said Mary, “I’ve no reason to, everything I have is in this county. The town may have charms well enough for others, but I am only persuaded by higher pleasures, and the society of the country should do quite as much for me as any other more urban people.”  
  
To this the nun made no quick reply, but she curtsied again, and looked at her, where Mary stood behind the tall back of her reading chair. Had Mary not been sat a moment ago?  
  
“Lady Unction has charged me to see you to London, and then Rome, so that you might begin the work of the Madonna.”  
  
“Sister…”  
  
“Dawn,” the helpful nun replied.  
  
“Sister Dawn,” said Mary, “what is the work of a Madonna if not charity, surely, and sober thought, and, and…”  
  
“Aye, them, in part,” said Sister Dawn, softly.  
  
“Why shouldn’t I stay at home and do it? I did it perfectly well before, and now I can do it twice, three times as much. Why does charity have to be abroad, why can’t charity start at home, and remain at home?”  
  
Sister Dawn came to stand beside her. She was taller than Mary, Mary realised, but her headscarf and constantly bowed head made her seem much smaller than she was, when she did not stand so close.  
  
“When the servant girl asked Peter if he knew Christ, he denied it. If Peter, who was with the Lord from the very beginning was frightened, why shouldn’t you be? But you were chosen for a reason, and it was not to serve the gentry of Hertfordshire, Miss. His Grace won’t abandon you.” She tapped Mary on the shoulder, “I shan’t abandon you either.”  
  
Mary gnawed at her lip. “I am not _entirely_ afraid.”  
  
“Of course not. He has called you to greater things, and He is with you.”  
  
It was true. There was the gentle warmth, the flickering ghost of flame beneath her skin, that washed over her and through her. He had not spoken to her, had not instructed her, not directly, but He was with her.  
  
“Excuse me,” said Mary. Sister Dawn curtsied to her and Mary left the room, crossing the hall and climbing the staircase that led to the family apartments. Her room did not have residents on either side, with her elder sisters now gone, and Kitty’s door was shut, opposite her own. It was peace enough to do what she had to do.  
  
Her maid was brushing down one of a dozen dresses draped over her bed, while the other, older, nun was loading Mary’s few tinctures into a cloth bag. There was a large trunk open on the floor, and Mary’s voice stuck again, before she could speak.  
  
“Sarah,” asked Mary, “have you taken away my writing articles?” The stationary set was quickly produced, and a pen and inkpot set out with some paper and envelopes.  
  
The letter to Jane, her eldest sister, she undertook very quickly. She was of such good humour, and so generally obliging that she, of all her sisters, had always been the Bennet sister with whom Mary was most close. Mary might often share her lectures with her for twenty minutes or more, before some important matter would draw Jane away.  
  
She set down her news, her promotion to Madonna, and the relatively uncertain expedition that was set before her, and her own small request of Jane and Mr. Bingley, mortgaged on a degree of sisterly affection which she hoped would provide sufficient credit.  
  
Next, the more difficult. To Lizzie, she set down the same news as quickly as she might. For the purpose of this letter she let herself transform. Surely, now, she would be the equal of Lizzie’s quickness. Still, she felt anxious, Lizzie who was always so satirical that Mary could never pick apart her compliments from her barbs, and it lent her letter a stilted voice.  
  
She shared the news of her engagement while the most pressing concern to Mary’s heart she again left to the end, almost perfunctory, so as to disguise the conflict, the selfish heart of the request.

  
_...Regarding the final matter,_ she wrote _, I must make one sincere request, the particular concern of which I have already undertaken to write to Mrs. Bingley, in that capacity. Kitty is not to follow me to London and unhappy, but I think town would suit her return to sensibility poorly. I must ask that you entreat Mamma to send her to Derbyshire and your company, when not with Jane. I dare not make the same request of Lydia in Newcastle._

_Yours &tc &tc, _

  
The treachery would sting her mother, but it was the best thing for Kitty, and Mary had now exhausted her power in that regard as well as she was able. Whether Lizzie would agree, or her mercurial temper would discover some objection in a quarter that Mary had not even conceived of, she could only guess. If any of her family were not respect the implicit wisdom of her becoming Madonna, it would be Lizzie.  
  
Her final letter, however, was the greatest difficulty. She had experience in writing to sisters, with four of them, after all. A fiancée was an entirely different matter. The effusions that had come easily that morning would spear her, too mortifying to be proof-read.  
  
There was a knock on the open door. Mr. Bennet entered, inspecting the working of the nun and the servant.  
  
“What a difference a day can make,” he said.  
  
Mary searched her mind for any similar aphorism, but nothing particularly profound or pithy presented itself. “I have often reflected that the measure of a change in a day, a month, or a year can be felt in proportionate to the degree of change experienced,” she offered.  
  
Mr. Bennet sighed, and placed a hand on her shoulder, in an unusual display of paternal tenderness. “Some things remain constant, however, it is apparent.” He took his hand away. “Mary,” he said, “it is clearer and clearer to me that I am not in all ways an exceptional man. No! Hold any gasp that was sure to come, this is shocking news indeed to any who know me, I am certain.”  
  
The old nun looked at him, quite peculiarly.  
  
“But I ought never call you silly, as I have done in times past, to my chagrin.” There was something else. Something that he seemed to be fighting. The nun remained, but he dismissed Sarah quickly.  
  
“I am proud of you, Mary, and I am ashamed of myself.”  
  
Mary rushed to reassure him that he had no cause to be ashamed, but he would not have it.  
  
“I _am_ ashamed,” he said, “but I am not beyond instruction, and neither must your sister be, as long as the instruction is not from myself, or my dear Mrs. Bennet, though it pains me to fall back to my long injurious speech.”  
  
“I don’t understand, Papa,” said Mary.  
  
“Sister Dawn tells me I shall not have to write to your Uncle’s in Christchurch street, but that the Church shall have lodging for you instead. In that case, perhaps you ought to take Kitty with you, so that she can benefit from your society?”  
  
“Take Kitty to London?” asked Mary, heart sinking.  
  
“I am not certain what Madonna do, exactly, when not performing miracles, but reading, writing, singing and service must form some small part. If it is not more than ten minutes then it should be ten minutes more than she might expect to enjoy here at Longbourn. It seems to me a very good idea.”  
  
Mary looked at the two letters recently completed. In London, Mary scarcely knew what she might expect. St. Paul’s Cathedral of course, the home of the Madonna. Charity, and prayer, and sermon. She would have to share those pearls of wisdom she had gathered, and for which she presumed she had been chosen. Then Rome, sailing across the seas to the Apostolic Palace, and Kitty by her side. Kitty with her eye for fashion, commenting on every petitioner’s dress and mien. Kitty flirting with the sailors and rushing through those galleries that Mary must now surely be invited to, without even a hint of interest in the art or sobriety.  
  
To travel alone was frightening. To travel with Kitty, insupportable. What dignity could Kitty reflect on Mary’s office? _What if they like her more than you?_ came a smaller voice.  
  
“I must settle first, Papa, I am sure. But I could send for her, when I have understood how we might employ our time, I am certain.”  
  
“Ah,” said Mr. Bennet, “ah, of course. It will be too diverting an environment at first, I am sure.”  
  
Mary looked at her father, and he twiddled his thumbs. “Very well,” he said, “I shall leave you to your preparations.”  
  
At the door, he looked back, and paused. “Mary,” he said, “you are the most sensible of my daughters. Remember, wherever you go, that you were chosen for things _you_ might say, not the books that anyone might read.”  
  
Mary frowned, but he was gone before she could make a reply. It seemed an entirely confusing point. She had learned and now she was called to teach. What could she contribute to the understanding of goodness that was novel, what need was there for insight in moral instruction? She turned back to her writing paper.  
  
Mary could not summon the joy that had been so entirely hers, earlier in the day, and so wrote in her usual style. After a little deliberation, she concluded _‘Yours, Mary_ ’. Really, that should be entirely sufficient, for any man.  
  
***** *****  
  
“To London, we go!” Sister Dawn gave a crack of the whip from her peculiar seat at the right of the horsebox, and the horses pulled against the equipage, wheels turned, and gravel crunched.  
  
For the Bennet family, Mary’s departure had been a very quick affair. Mrs. Bennet had made a great piteous cry, but quickly settled, upon account of her nerves, and Mr. Bennet had worn a very slight smile. Kitty had not repeated those sentiments that had proven so distressing to her in the morning, but had instead been able to wish Mary off with a composed face, and waved to her for the whole length of the drive.  
  
The older nun was sat opposite her in the Bennet carriage, facing backwards to the road. She was not one for talking, seeming at least three-quarters of the way towards a vow of silence, and Mary began to think she had a rather severe turn to her face. She was no phrenologist, but undoubtedly the appearance of one’s face must have some bearing upon the dignity and composure of their character nearly as much as their skull.  
  
This more severe censure than Mary would usually consider, and Mary’s foot was tapping on the floor despite any attempt to still it. She was all a fidget. If the nuns had not sent their phaeton ahead of them then she would at least have the distraction of the wind in her hair.  
  
“Should we arrive before long?” asked Mary.  
  
Sister Dawn turned from the front. There was a window between the carriage and the box, where the nun sat at the reigns. “We are only 28 miles from the Thames. We ought to be there before long. Before sunset, certainly.”  
  
At the outskirts of London, they changed horses. There was no time for an early dinner, though Mary realised that she had barely eaten anything of substance since breakfast. They travelled through Clerkenwell, then turned through Covent Garden and went along to Mayfair.  
  
The city was a great deal different to the Longbourn and Meriton’s rural charms. Once in the city, there was little evidence or remembrance that the country might exist at all. This close to the Thames there was a greasy, odorous smell that lay over every part of every street. The roads here were paved — rather than the earthen tracks that more commonly made up a small town’s larger streets — and the traffic was phenomenal.  
  
Hack-cabs were everywhere, little black carriages being steered by their cabbies with their licence stuck out to one side. Proper, decent carriages were rare, but young Gentlemen tearing through the throngs in gigs were less so. It happened at least three times that Mary saw, the young men driving in excess of a dozen miles per hour, heedless of risk to life or limb.  
  
For most of the journey, there was the press of the general public on either side of the main carriageway. Until the edge of Covent Garden, they were a raucous, patchwork, and unwashed mob. Mary was called at, peered at, and some children ran up to the carriage door to gawp through the window – although more at the nuns than Mary. Passing into Mayfair, the poor melted away, the tradesmen disappeared, and suddenly fashion was everywhere.  
  
The change was outstanding. There were chocolatiers, there were cake shops, and fabulous dressmakers. Shopfronts were attended by footmen dressed in fine wings, and dashing livery. Fine ladies were strolling in pairs, parasols over their shoulder, with exquisite petticoats of rich colour. Dashing gentlemen in tall hats and good coats were everywhere, and even the stone of the buildings was cleaner and grander. There was good Tudor architecture here, mixed with more modern white facades, and the mixture of dark timber then white quarry stone made the whole area very grand.  
  
Still, it remained London. The carriageway had the smell and sights of frequent use, and a city-man from elsewhere swept them into a little trolley that he pushed in and out of the road.  
  
“Sister Dawn,” called Mary to the front, “are we not turning away from St. Paul’s?”  
  
“Yes, Miss Bennet?”  
  
“Well, are we not staying in that area, or a hotel in Blackfriars at least?” she asked.  
  
Sister Dawn gave a snorting laugh, that carried on too long. “No. No. All Madonna must meet the mistress of their Order in this Kingdom, first. We are to go to Spennymoor House, Miss.”  
  
Spennymoor House! Mary had presumed that she must one day meet her, Lady Unction had implied as much, but to do it today, and be so unprepared!  
  
The streets became quieter as they turned off the main fare and entered Morley Square. It was a typical Mayfair arrangement. Townhouses surrounded a well bounded central-park on three sides. The final side was entirely taken up by Spennymoor House.  
  
The carriage clattered to a stop, directly in front of the steps. A footman quickly appeared, then a butler, with two more attendants.  
  
“Miss Mary Bennet, for the Duchess of Durham.” Sister Dawn clambered from the horsebox with the Butler’s assistance.  
  
He was a stern man. He had a large nose, a larger belly, and his hair was grey and thin atop his head. She straightened her dress. When he spoke it was with a deep voice, resonant and cultured, with rolled consonants and clipped sentences.  
  
“I am afraid Her Grace is currently not resident. We do not expect her return before Thursday.”  
  
Mary smoothed her dress. It was perhaps for the best. The thought of Her Grace’s attention excited her vanity, but it would be better to prepare, better to approach with composure and dignity fitting her new position.  
  
“Of course,” said the Butler, “by instruction, we should be happy to receive Miss Bennet pending her return.” He gestured at the footman, and without so much as a ‘by your leave’, the trunks were quickly taken into the grand house, via the trade door.  
  
For Mary, the great door was thrown open, the Butler bowed, and she was ushered inside, into the finest house that she had ever seen.  
  
***** *****  
  
Mary was taken to a room in the North wing. The house was expansive and, above floors, was split into two wings and a central, deeper hall, that opened into a small parkland that extended behind the house. There were four drawing rooms, of various colours, two libraries — one larger, and one adjoining the Duchess’s study — and, although Mary would not see it, in fact, there were two kitchens for the Duke’s two French Chefs, who were often in disagreement about all things culinary.  
  
It was evident that Mr. Parsons, the Butler, felt a great deal of regard for his master and mistress, for he was effusive in their praise and any that might be reflected upon them by the dignity of their home.  
  
Mary’s room was placed towards the rear of the guest quarter. Mr. Parsons apologised, but it seemed the guest rooms were frequently well populated, for the Duke and Duchess had been blessed with four sons, each of whom kept quite different society.  
  
The room was broad, wide, and in good taste. It was elegant and spoke of wealth married with sense. Though she was far back, she did not feel neglected. It was far grander than her usual surroundings.  
  
“What shall I do, Sister Dawn?” asked Mary. The nun had accompanied her, carrying those things from the carriage which it had not been suitable for a footman to take. Indeed, all her larger effects were already placed in the room.  
  
“I shall put these down here for you, Miss Mary,” she said, and she did so, “and a card, too. Send a man to me day or night, and do let me know when you expect to go to the Cathedral tomorrow. I shall go ahead of them, and see to your office.”  
  
“My office?”  
  
“Tomorrow, tomorrow.” She puffed out a breath and stretched her back on setting down the luggage. “You rest now, Miss Mary.” Sister Dawn cast a final look around the room, then curtsied quickly. “Goodbye, miss, and God bless you.”  
  
“Goodbye, Sister,” she replied, then she was gone and Mary was alone.  
  
Lacking the appropriate introductions, there was little exploring that she might do. Her Uncle and Aunt in Gracechurch Street were not dreadfully far, but it would be very impertinent to invite them to someone else’s townhouse, and rude for Mary to call on them before meeting anyone within this house. The only answer was to defer, and it was a straight shot from her bedroom to the main library that sat just beyond the stairway.  
  
Travelling dress catching on the rich carpet, she headed there quickly. Inside, it was still, and quiet. There was only a footman, maintaining the lamps, and one gentleman at the farthest corner hunched over a book who did not look at her on her entering.  
  
The library was extensive — exceedingly extensive — the work of many generations. She felt lighter by the moment, and less stiff. She flitted from aisle to aisle taking in subjects. Here were the classics and, here, a whole shelf full of atlases. Quickly she located her preferred subjects. There were extensive works, by preachers, bishops and Madonnas on the proper life of women.  
  
A great, dusty tome occupied a place on a shelf just beyond her easy reach. It looked as if it had been written by the Maid of Angers herself. There was no ladder that she could see but a small footstool was beside the nearest table. With it, she could easily reach the book but securing it was another matter for it was heavier than it looked. It fell to the ground with a great crash and Mary almost tumbled with it.  
  
“Ho!” came a voice from out of sight. The footman appeared at the opposite end of the aisle from the voice, and she waved him away, her face blushing.  
  
The cover was fortunately not creased, and she urgently smoothed down the pages. It was too large to sit comfortably on the arm, and heading to the near table she placed it down. There was a tear on the cover page, only small, but definitely noticeable.  
  
Deep in examination, he was almost upon her before she turned. He was a tall gentleman, in a green jacket and fine waistcoat, with dark hair. He was tall, handsome, and had a noble countenance, and certainly could not be older than five-and-twenty. Still, what drew the eye was the stick on which he leant and the lame left leg for which it compensated on each step.  
  
“Who are you?” he asked. Mary was paralysed, all proper feeling suggested that he should not approach her, so bluntly and so unprovoked. He saw her tenseness and bowed perfunctorily. “Who should need to introduce themselves, in their own home? Lord John Morley.”  
  
Mary curtsied very quickly. “Miss Mary Bennet,” she said. The Duke’s son hobbled around her, to the book that she had dropped.  
  
“Ah, the first Madonna’s book, in the original French.” He looked at her sharply. “You’ve torn the front page.”  
  
Her blush deepened. “Apologies, Lord John, it was poorly done.”  
  
He tutted. A moment’s more examination and he closed it. “Well, I’m sure you are convinced you need not worry, Miss Bennet. First edition century-old books are surely ten a penny for this house, hm? You are not the first Madonna who thinks herself more valuable than a Duke.”  
  
“Sir–” But he would not allow her to interrupt.  
  
“Miss Bennet, you said. You are very new, aren’t you? Well, I cannot say you are wrong, much as a right-minded society might wish otherwise.” He jabbed his stick toward the corner farthest away from his reading desk.  
  
“If you have not had your fill of book-flinging, may I suggest our small novel corner, you will find the fictions fall very well and are perhaps more deserving.” He placed his stick against the carpet, then took to hobble past her. Done, he no more regarded her than the footstool at her feet.  
  
Despite his high station, and his handsome face, his manners were beyond poor. Every right feeling suggested rebuke, even if this might be their first meaning. She was trembling with the frustration of his unwarranted attack.  
  
Lord John was settling into his chair laboriously, and by chasing after him Mary found she was now standing over him. An added confusion. He should stand if she were standing, or she should sit, but he was rude and she did not feel like sitting with him, while perhaps it would be the greater abuse to call him to stand.  
  
Settled, he turned his face to his books and did not look at her. Impertinent, arrogant man.  
  
“A genteel man ought to carry himself with dignity, introduce himself with alacrity, and not abuse a woman on their first meeting.”  
  
He turned to her very slightly. “I am not of the gentry, I am of the nobility if that settles your concerns.”  
  
Maddening. Her mouth opened and closed.  
  
“Perhaps, if you do not value silence, Miss Bennet, you ought not to have come to the library. If you find you are missing the appropriate attention, perhaps you might return to my brothers.”  
  
“You are the first of your family to make themselves known to me.”  
  
He looked at her fully. “Ah,” he said, “well. You are a very unfortunate Madonna indeed.”  
  
He seemed inclined to say no more. He looked at her, but it was very flat and different to anyone else who had seen her since she had been beatified.  
  
“It is a peculiar thing to consider any Madonna unfortunate, sir. I am blessed.”  
  
“To have vigour for eight hours, at the cost of infirmity for the next sixteen seems a greater curse to me.” He tapped his hand against his thigh. “In this I am not satirical.”  
  
“I think you are cynical.” It seemed the best response, for she was not entirely certain what he meant.  
  
He bowed his head. “I should never disagree with you, Miss Bennet.” He shook a bell at one side and the Footman hurried over. “Smith, please show Miss Bennet to whichever room my brothers are occupying, and announce her. Leave the book, thank you.”  
  
Mary curtsied and turned on her heel, striding from the room without another word.  
  
She was taken to the dining room where a part of several gentlemen and ladies were at rest. Introductions were made to the elder sons of the house. They were all polite, warm and engaging, more than pleased to make her acquaintance.  
  
Still, when dinner was called some hours later, Lord John was seated nearest Mary. Her ill mood returned, and they exchanged hardly a dozen words until the end of the evening and the breaking up of the party.  
  
***** *****


	8. [Worm] Trigger at Will (CYOAv5) 1, 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I, shamefully, like CYOAs. The actual concept of them. In the time between 2015 and 2018 when I wasn't really writing, I got into them. Then, after I started writing again, I made a Worm v5 CYOA for my own enjoyment. I wrote about 30k of it while I was plotting my more sincere efforts. I haven't tried to do anything particularly clever here, like Prison of Glass, or Infinitesimal, which are actually good. But this is not Abaddon Borne, at the very least so I suspect there may be at least some people like myself who would enjoy it.
> 
> Also, I've said in the ABFoD thread that it was my third iteration of a bounty hunter plotline. The first was with an OC Trump in the nineties with a plot *very* similar to ABFoD except Bloodhound (Bloodstone) was his mentor not his hunter, and then in this CYOA you will encounter bounty hunters, like Tenacity, that I then used again in ABFoD, though their backgrounds and powers are a little different in both. So yeah, sorry that you'll see some version 1 ideas here.
> 
> CYOA worm v5 gimel

**1**  
  
When Gaia had tired of her lecherous husband and king she gaslighted her children into taking care of him, in true godly fashion. Alex’s memory of the myth was a bit flaky at this point, he couldn’t remember if Atlas and his brothers had lifted the primordial deity from their mother and _then_ Kronos had got to work, or whether it was the other way round.  
  
Either way, the sickle had been brandished. Splash had gone something Ouronos would likely rather hadn’t, and then there had been a new king of the gods – or a king of the titans, rather. It wasn’t clear the moral beneath myth for the people of ancient Cyprus. Perhaps it was as simple as ‘don’t expect to get intimate with your missus once children are on scene’.  
  
Aphrodite’s rock was supposedly where the offending goods had been thrown into the sea. From them had sprung Aphrodite herself while from the blood that had scattered around the organ had sprung the Furies, the Giants and various other monsters.  
  
Living here, as a child, Greek myth had captivated Alex. Near him were fountain-shrines to Aphrodite, ruins of hippodromes, and mosaics intact from the manors of the priests and magi who had once inhabited them.  
  
As a kid, climbing the rock had been a source of wonder. Looking out at where _magic_ had once sprung to being, sincerely believing with a child’s logic that once upon a time Poseidon had ruled beneath the waves and Aphrodite had stepped out from them.  
  
Looking at the rock now, a horrible cordon ringed the whole thing off. A sign in Greek and English said climbing was verboten and unsafe due to falling boulders. Still, Alex had come to recapture that sense of magic that adult-life was sorely lacking with a nostalgia-holiday to a country he hadn’t visited since primary school, and a cordon was no match for him.  
  
There was no else on the beach. A glorious sunny day, blue sea met the shore stretching out to join a blue sky at the distant horizon. Alex kicked off his flip-flops and waded into the sea. The waves pushed at him with more force than he expected but he was careful not to get too close to the stack and the churning waters underneath it until he was completely around the other side. People had once used to swim around the whole rock to gain a blessing of beauty from Aphrodite, touching its side all the way round. Looking at the waters breaking against the rock or else being sucked under it, into dark forbidding caves, he had to guess that disfiguring scars were sexy back then.  
  
There was a small spur that stuck out into the water, a point where he would be able to begin the climb up. He approached, used the wave to drive himself onto the outcropping and pull himself up. The shape of the rock meant that it shouldn’t really be a difficult climb, even wet. With hindsight, it was a dangerous thought to have.  
  
It was the fourth or fifth handhold that gave way, just high enough that he couldn’t hop down to the narrow outcropping. He fell, landing in the churning water just below him with a smack.  
  
His eyes closed reflexively and the waves tumbled him along until he hit rock with a smack. All his air left him in a rush, and he opened his eyes to complete darkness. Wild-eyed, the cold water pressed on his face and his heart was paralysed by cold, his arms thrashing uselessly. His fingers felt sharp rock on one side and empty space on the other and he pulled himself along the rock, no idea which way was up or down. _Fuck. God. I’m going to die_.  
  
Alex placed his feet where his hands had found what he hoped was the bottom, and pushed backwards hard. His head hit rock and there was blinding pain. Curled into a ball the waves pushed on him, pulling him to and fro. His fingers were tingling now and there was a pain in his chest saying _breathe_ , _breathe_. He reached out and his fingers found air.  
  
Alex pulled himself into the little pocket of air, taking a deep gasping breath. Braced against the hollow he held himself steady against the water, slowly calming. Slowly feeling more human, just a hair less panicked.  
  
The gap around him wasn’t complete. Turning a circle, there was a gap in front of him, a ledge and a space he couldn’t feel the edge of. He kicked out and hauled himself up on noodle limp arms. Touching his scalp where it was most sore his fingers came away wet. His exposed arms and legs were as cold as ice, and he felt like he was touching someone else when he pinched them. There was no obvious way to tell if his skull was cracked or if it would end up as nothing more than a nasty cut.  
  
Shuffling forward was a matter of sliding his leading foot forward, feeling the stone prick into his skin. His eyes were slowly adjusting to the low levels of light, but it was dark, and there was no obvious way out.  
  
 _Holy fucking fuck._ There was a man in front of him. A ginormous man, at least 8 feet tall. The shadow of him no more than a three yards ahead of Alex and perfectly still.  
  
He stood, frozen, for almost a minute. Waiting, to see if they would do anything.  
  
“Hello,” he whispered. Nothing.  
  
It was his brain playing tricks on him, surely, he told himself. The lizard brain was scared and trying to find a concrete danger.  
  
 _Still_ …  
  
He edged forward slowly. There was the hint of a face now. _What the hell is this_? Slowly he stretched out and touched its face, his stomach turning. Cold stone. It was a statue.  
  
A faint light began to be noticeable all around the cave, and he could see in muted shades of grey. It was a Greek statue, time-worn and missing a nose. A classical man with grand beard and curly hair, a toga draped from one shoulder. With one hand, the statue was resting its weight on a staff with a single snake coiled around it. It even made a certain sort of a sense, this had been a site where people hoped for beauty and healing, and this was some old hidden cult site.  
  
If this had been a shrine once then there had to be a way out that he wasn’t seeing. They couldn’t have swum in and out each time, surely. Where was the light coming from?  
  
Alex edged behind the statue, making his way to the far wall. It was a bare wall, but there were faint letters giving off a grey light. Enough to see by after five minutes or so, it seemed. Closer, he saw they were Greek, some word other than hello and goodbye that Alex had no chance of knowing. Hopefully _exit_.  
  
He kneeled and gently blew on the words.  
  
The whole cavern came to light. The word in front of him faded away until it was completely gone, but all around the small cave thousands more came to light. Except they weren’t greek. They were like some strange mixture between cave art and hieroglyph. They were packed side to side on each wall, bright enough all together that the shrine was a lit up in faint blue.  
  
Alex wandered. What was this? An archeological treasure, definitely. If he survived he was going to make some Indiana Jones type very happy. He looked closely at the walls: here was what looked like a two-handed sword, and next to it a crown, and next to it a crescent moon, all packed together in 30cm of wall space. There had to be thousands. Above the moon, at eye-level, there was a stylised scarab. There was nothing suggestive of exit or staircase to him. He blew on the scarab. It had worked before.  
  
Nothing happened. Alex reached out and brushed his fingers against it and they came away blue. He rubbed his fingers together, there was nothing to feel, nothing granular or oily or warm. After a moment the light faded. Then his fingertips and thumbs began to tingle.  
  
 _And it gets worse_.  
  
His arm began to burn, and it felt like an electric-shock was shooting up it. Like he’d knocked his elbow against something but the vibration had spread across his whole body. The burning reached his neck and his head went light, like he’d stood up too fast.  
  
 _At least it’s not drowning_. His knees buckled and he fell.  
  
***** *****  
  
 **2**  
  
He couldn’t have been out for more than a second. Alex almost remembered hitting the floor, except he was now back in the sea, or the rain. Cold water was hitting him in the face, all over, while he was laying in cold water. And it smelled, not _bad_ , exactly. Just noticeable. Rain after dry, he could smell earth, and salt.  
  
Sitting up, his head swam. He took in the urban view and it was clear he was no longer in Kansas or even a small, magical cave formed from the mutilated testicles of a god. He jumped to his feet, wiping the water from his eyes as well as he could. The rain was really coming down.  
  
The sky that he could see was stuffed with knotted, angry clouds, all coiled over each like a hundred snakes mating. There was faint thunder but no light. It was that sort of thickness of cloud where it could’ve been midday or dusk without anyway of telling the difference.  
  
He was in the middle of a ruined street, covered in heavy, scummy water. He could see where the road had cracked up, a long trench cutting down the tarmac’s middle, while on either side American style multi-storey concrete buildings were squished cheek to jowl, and had seen better days.  
  
The rain was heavy and fat. It was that rain that could soak you to the bone in two seconds flat. The sort that only lasted for a minute before it couldn’t sustain itself. Here, however, the water in the street attested to its staying power. This wasn’t going to play itself out. Gingerly, Alex touched his head, and winced. He had to get somewhere where he could get his head injury looked at, or into shelter at the very least.  
  
He hobbled towards the edge of the road and there was another crash of thunder. Except there was no lightning, and even through the numbness and the pins and needles in his bare feet Alex felt something, vibrating up his shins in the same moment that he heard the thunder.  
  
 _Oh God_. What the hell was going on? He waded through the shallow water. His breaths were coming too quickly, he was sure, fighting against the rising fear that was climbing into his throat.  
  
Whatever had happened here had smashed the doors of the building open. Unfortunately, it had really _smashed_ them open. There was glass all over the first few stairs into the building’s lobby. Cold feet could barely feel anything as he tried to avoid the worst patches but he could _hear_ a crunch. The lobby looked pretty residential – there were letter-boxes and a couple of chairs that had been overturned. At the far end was a lift, an elevator, but he skipped it and headed to the stairs on its right. After the first turn, the stairs were dry and he was finally out of the wet and damp. He was still shivering but his swimwear would dry out quickly, even if it wouldn’t keep him warm.  
  
By the third flight of stairs his feet starting to prickle painfully. The tingling began to reach higher and higher up his legs. What did it mean, nerve damage? Blood loss? A frightful inability to cope with any sort of crisis of a mysterious and life-threatening origin, on a constitutional level? He could barely walk by the time he reached the roof.  
  
All things considered, it was probably going to do him little good, exposing himself to the elements again. It was worth it, whatever was going on whereve he had ended up was either a flood of biblical proportions, a war, or something _worse_. And his money was on the latter. The architecture here didn’t seem Cypriot, nor did the temperature.  
  
The door had one of those fire-safety bars and swung open easily into the weather, Alex getting hit in the face by rain, solid as a wet fish.  
  
He limped to the edge of the roof closest to where he thought the thunder had come from. Pressing himself to the ledge that bordered the rooftop and looking down, it was apparent the street had been torn up just like the one he’d woken up on.  
  
To the left, just about visible through the rain, was the sea. Everything on the beach that bordered it was ruined. Just absolutely smashed. It must have been a tidal wave. There was evidence of slumped buildings and little overturned cars, all pushed inland. _Jesus Christ_.  
  
The pins and needles at this point had reached his finger tips, keeping level with where it had reached on his lower abdomen. This wasn’t normal. To his right was something worse, something to totally distract him from the ascending loss of sensation.  
  
Two girls were dwarfed by half a dozen monsters at the end of the road – maybe 200 yards away from him. Alex only had eyes for one.  
  
It was tall, 30 feet, Alex recalled. Maybe twice the height of a giraffe but all bunched up, its tail extended straight, flicking back and forth like a metronome. Water fell from it. _Poured_. It was difficult to convey just how _wrong_ it looked. Its arms were too long, its legs too short, and crooked, and its head was always moving in a way that was whip-quick and out of balance with the swinging of its pendulum arms and lashing tail.  
  
It was blue, but its eyes glowed green. Alex knew where he was, and where he was.  
  
That’s Rachel and Skitter, he thought faintly. Somehow.  
  
Leviathan was _so fast_. He grabbed one monstrous, bony dog – the size of a small elephant. He bashed its brains out against the shelter next to him. He cut through another one, and the water that followed him was like a saw carving deep into the third that leapt at him. Almost quicker than I could see, he had changed, legs reversed, body turned so that he could stamp a foot down at the fourth beast – crushing it.  
  
The other dogs didn’t leap, backing off slightly. I couldn’t hear any voices now but I remembered Rachel would be shouting ‘Kill’ and…  
  
 _He_ dropped down like a stone, landing out of sight of Leviathan silently. There was a golden glow, a light that spread out into the water, into the sky. The rain slowed, then stopped. Inside, Alex burned, like heart-burn, like an electric shock but all-over, the tingling now everywhere but his head. He couldn’t even cry out as he collapsed against the ledge of the roof, chin caught on the wall. But his gaze never left Scion. He could see him clearly. Long hair, a white bodysuit, and gold. Gold all around him.  
  
The burning receded, all at once, fading to a slight tingle all over his skin, like a hand you’d fallen asleep on but could still move. He didn’t try and move, didn’t try and stand, but Alex found myself getting to his feet without meaning too. Standing tall. His legs moved by themselves, and his wrists worked, his fingers opening and closing. But he wasn’t doing it, he was being moved like a puppet.  
  
Scion blasted Leviathan in the back a moment after the monster’s tail killed the final dogs, and the endbringer was sent bouncing down the road past Alex. He tried to turn his head to follow what happened next, but he couldn’t move his neck.  
  
Instead, his eyes were fixed on Scion. The entity’s skin suit turned to look at him, and its golden eyes met Alex’s own. Then he was slipping, falling, his whole world was gold, and…  
  
***** *****


	9. [Worm] Trigger at Will (CYOAv5) 3, 4

**3**

***** *****  
  
He was lying in water, heavy rain pattered on his face, and there was a terrible pain in his side like he had been stabbed. He rolled with a grunt and stood, stumbling and splashing before falling onto his arse in the middle of the road.  
  
He was surrounded by buildings, ruined buildings, in a street filled with scummy water. The tarmac had been ripped through the middle and water was bubbling up from below. The tall, American-style buildings around him were squished together, tight, but they were ruined. Glass windows broken, walls cracked and crumbling. And… And he had done this before. He had already woken up here, had noticed these things before. There was a terrible sense of _déjà vu_.  
  
He twisted and a white-hot stab shot through his side all the way to his groin. He touched his fingers to his flank and they came away bloody, there was another shock of white pain, then a steady throb. There was something small and bumpy stuck into his side, just beyond where he–  
  
A woman dropped from the sky onto the road before him. A half helmet covered her upper face, dressed in grey and black with a long cape falling from her shoulders. Embossed on the front of what looked like a one-piece spandex suit was a lighthouse from navel to neck. _Alexandria,_ he thought. She was shorter than he had expected. Still tall, maybe a hair below six feet, but certainly no Narwhal.  
  
“Stay where you are,” she said, “don’t move.”  
  
“Alexa–”  
  
“No talking!” she said. “Be quiet.”  
  
His side was insisting in its ache and he leaned back onto the street, laying down into the water that came up to almost his eyes. It was Worm. He had died and was in some odd interpretation of Heaven or Hell, or a coma, or a simulation. Or it was all real and something about that cave had brought him here.  
  
Looking down the street there were no obvious clues, he couldn’t see the sea from here with the intersections and the urban sprawl that took up both ends of the short street he had found himself on. There was no Leviathan that he could see; no explosions or collapsing buildings or screams. But this had to be it: Brockton Bay during the Leviathan attack. He remembered that all the pipes had been ruptured. He remembered that Skitter had broken her back. He remembered Scion.  
  
He sat up again and Alexandria said nothing, but best not to push it. Wetness was dripping down his side, but it was warm. His own blood.  
  
For a moment, they were still. He could hear those same distant explosions as before. Before Scion, before Leviathan. And the rain was still going on, it made no sense. The fight should be over. Alexandria wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. But then, why would she be treating him like a criminal not a casualty if something canon-breaking hadn’t happened during the period he couldn’t remember, when Scion had looked at him?  
  
There was a pressure on his chest, like something halfway between a stitch and heartburn. He twisted his torso instinctively, and the sensation fractured. Like his sternum had broken under a blunt blow, and everything changed.  
  
There was no vision of the entities, no fourth collapse, but he had powers. He could feel pulling and twitching at his side, and he could see through his tattered shirt the skin pulling itself closed. Glass was pushing itself out of the soles of his feet, and a smaller gash on his leg began to seal itself shut.  
  
He stood, and he felt light. His hands were warm, and his vision sharper, he looked at his fingers, making out the prints on each one, like he’d just put newly prescribed glasses on.  
  
“Sit down,” said Alexandria, and she was in the air again. Her toes just above the water. She had an aura now. A uniform grey, like her costume, it was composed of a thousand tiny fractal images of a tiny figure flying, punching, reading. Herself, using her powers, he realised.  
  
Even his mind had changed, Alex realised. He was thinking fast, faster than he had before, it was like he was thinking with more than one brain, like he was offloading all the categorising and observing to something else, and getting back the correct answers in an instant, like his brain was a giant google.  
  
And he remembered, in that same way, that this was similar to the way that Alexandria had described her own power when it was fresh.  
  
He tabulated the observations in a moment. He felt light, he felt smart, therefore he was copying Alexandria’s power. He was also seeing her power, which was more like Chevalier, and he was healing. It was possible these were unique powers of his own, but more likely the capes responsible were within his copying distance, but not within sight.  
  
More importantly, whether he was a permanent or temporary power copier, he could be of great use in a fight against Leviathan. Alexandria’s presence suggested that the feeling wasn’t mutual. Did he steal his power from others? Was he like Grue, someone who copied without diminishing the original, or was his copying deleterious?  
  
Somewhere, in the background, there was a distant part of Alex screaming. He had powers now. _Powers_.  
  
“Do you feel different, Alexandria? Weaker?”  
  
She didn’t respond. Something in his body language must have tipped her hand. She was fast. Two minutes earlier she would’ve been _blindingly_ fast. Now he was able to turn his body in time to catch her punch on his shoulder rather than his jaw. He rocketed back like a catapult, flipped, slowed in the air, and pulled himself to a stop. He felt exactly as he had when he was stood on the street, except there was nothing beneath his feet.  
  
He didn’t have time to react before she caught him, her fist driving into his unready gut. He caught onto her wrist with one hand, the wind driven out of him, spluttering. They _weren’t_ equal. Anyone else would’ve been dead, but she was still a weight-lifter fighting a toddler and the relative difference remained overwhelming.  
  
He expected her next blow to spike him into the ground, but this wasn’t Dragonball Z. She slipped around him like a gymnast, till she had him in a stranglehold, a forearm like an iron bar across his neck, and then she pulled him up. They flew up into the sky as she choked him out. She knew her own weakness, so she was taking an educated guess at his.  
  
It seemed to be working. Alex’s vision grew black at the edges, his lungs burning. Below him, the city sprawled out, half underwater. There were flashes of lights, like fireworks in a corner of the city, and an iceblock the size of a skyscraper.  
  
The coast appeared, spread out, then the hills beyond the city. But the view was losing its saturation, turning grey. He was passing out.  
  
There was a faint sensation, tied to the little part of Alexandria’s forearm that he could see. Her aura of tiny, fractal pictures.  
  
Tattletale had once described her power like a sluice gate. It had seemed ridiculous, but there was that sensation now, a gate to nowhere. He lowered it first. The density of images in her aura dropped away, each image swelling like an overfull balloon, distorting to fill the gap left behind. It was fighting him. He couldn’t close the gate all the way, and it fluctuated, but it was enough. Suddenly it was more like they were even. His hand on her wrist pulled, and made progress. She punched him in the kidneys, in the neck, and it hurt but it didn’t hurt so much that he couldn’t focus on what he was doing.  
  
His head slipped under her arm, and he spun, keeping in contact with her as she juked, and they tumbled higher and higher into the air. His heart was beating quickly at the view below, and she would know that, but he tried to stay calm.  
  
“Rebecca,” he said. “Can we talk?”  
  
“You have displayed powerful master abilities. Usually, master abilities do not affect me, but neither usually do trumps. Talking to me will not help you, as I will be assumed to be compromised.”  
  
Alex hadn’t, to his knowledge, displayed powerful master abilities. He filed it away, it was perhaps something he had copied in his trigger, while Scion looked at him, which he could now no longer recall.  
  
“I see.”  
  
He hesitated. Talking to Alexandria was like talking to Tattletale, and until he understood what he had broken he couldn’t risk sharing what he knew. “Leviathan’s down there,” he said. “I doubt you’ll let me search and rescue, but let me _do_ something.”  
  
It was important not to let her set the tone, so Alex dropped, flying straight down at a couple of hundred meters a second. Almost immediately, he felt the difference. The air changed from cold butter, and he the hot knife, to a wall: a solid brick wall on the back of a flat-bed truck driving in the opposite direction at seventy miles per hour.  
  
It only lasted for a split second before Alexandria had caught him up, and her power returned, but she was bound to have noticed.  
  
 _Power copying is temporary,_ he noted. Around 300 yards, based on the speed he’d been travelling. Alexandria hadn’t used her superior speed to take advantage of his wobble either, as he had stopped suppressing her the moment he fell out of her range.  
  
“I don’t want to fall afoul of your organisation,” he shouted, over the roaring wind. The city was coming up fast now, and he could make out the mess of capes in the middle, near an inland lake. “Let me help.”  
  
He reached out to grab her wrist, and she didn’t move away. He let the sluice open all the way, and the images that made up her power broke apart into twice as many copies, shrinking down, and filling her aura with a deeper, richer grey. She shot forward, and even with a fraction of her durability, it was hard to hold on as she tore through the air.  
  
Leviathan appeared in his sight at almost the moment they hit him. Alexandria was flying Superman style, her fist out straight. Alex only had time to flinch. All their sound caught them at the same moment, and the world was lost into an explosion of thunder and water.  
  
He was let go. Then Alexandria was moving, fast enough to be both sides of the pincer. He kept his enhancement even as best as he could, below its ceiling, enough that she wouldn’t have to compensate for her own fluctuating strength. She caught Leviathan from one side on his legs, and then from the other side under his chin and clotheslined him.  
  
Fresh powers appeared, his body changing, glowing, new senses unfolding. He could see the trajectory of every person in his peripheral vision and where each laser and firebolt would hit. It was too much.  
  
He flew backwards, quickly, to the nearest brute. Alexandria was still punching, like a jackhammer, destroying Leviathan’s water shadow and keeping him from rising. Under the lights of the dozen powers firing, Alex could barely see the endbringer, but he could make out one emaciated wrist, and a huge crater in its head.  
  
“Hey man, who are you?”  
  
“Bearclaw, who are you?”  
  
Alex ignored him. He could barely see the guy who, by his posture, was trying to regain his breath. Alex’s vision kept cutting through him and his outline was smudged into various colours like an impressionist painting.  
  
“No armband,” Alex said. “I need you to priority message Dragon to bring Skitter here. She should be in the medical tent with a broken back. Get her fixed, bring her here, ASAP. Alexandria approved.” Which she hadn’t, of course, but they’d made an entrance together, and it made sense to use that. Bearclaw didn’t answer, just reached for his armband.  
  
It didn’t matter.  
  
There was a new power, unfolding. He felt it in the back of his head, and he knew instinctively what it would do: it was a portal power, the ability to swap two areas of space. Trickster’s power but without the mass and line of sight restrictions.  
  
Eidolon dropped into view, in the centre of a crackling field of static electricity. His hood was illuminated a faint green, and he was cowled and cloaked in green, too. Eidolon’s opaque crystal mask was tear dropped shape, elegant and intimidating – far better than the Mysterio-like fishbowl that he had imagined on first reading about the hero.  
  
Alex let Alexandria’s power go, and focused on the faint aura of deep black that he could see around Eidolon. Steadily he pushed it as high as he could go.  
  
The difference was immediate and palpable. His electrical field crackled and expanded, spheres detaching themselves and swinging wide to home in on Leviathan. He turned to mist, expansively, growing and flaking away into a thundercloud in human form. Then he fired a finger thin bolt of searing flame from his hand, which passed through the purple and crystalline forcefield that was now growing over Leviathan’s body. That was four powers.  
  
Then, from within his insubstantial form, dozens of fully formed Eidolon clones appeared, flying out to flank him. That was probably five. Six if his flight power was different as well.  
  
“Cover me, Bearclaw.”  
  
The ground was shaking under their feet, now that Alexandria didn’t have the pace to keep Leviathan pinned. She was taking as many blows as she was giving. Ice-blue lasers appeared from above, from a glowing golden figure. For a split second, Alex’s heart jumped, but it wasn’t Scion, it was Legend.  
  
He focused on Skitter, on who he had thought he had seen before Scion’s appearance. He cast out his hand, and a distortion appeared. Then Taylor was there, on top of a gurney, with a curtain rail and a drip stand, and the tiled field-hospital floor melding with the street that it had replaced at a sharp circular border.  
  
The change was instant. With Alexandria’s power he had time to think, to make the right decisions – like bringing a teenage girl, with a broken back, into the front lines of an Endbringer battle – and with Skitter’s power he had the ability to split Alexandria’s intelligence one hundred ways. Everything became simple.  
  
There was no one with an ability to heal nearby, but the power he was copying from Eidolon obliged. It only took two drops before it offered him the ability to project injuries as a blaster power. Leviathan didn’t take to it.  
  
“Sorry, Bearclaw. Panacea will fix you.” He fired Taylor’s injury into Bearclaw’s back and the man’s legs collapsed from under him. It only took Alex another moment to fly them all back to the limit of his tether to Alexandria.  
  
Skitter was still unconscious, and Bearclaw was gasping, unable to talk properly.  
  
“I got this, don’t worry. Deep breaths, big man.” He pressed the armband and spoke into it. “Medical attention needed. Bearclaw, this armband’s location.”  
  
He turned back to the fight, a couple of hundred yards away. Leviathan was up now, but his charges were met by co-ordinated laser fire from the Eidolons and he wasn’t making progress.  
  
Ok, what could Alex do? He could see about thirty capes, including Legend and Alexandria. He boosted their auras, as high as they could take.  
  
***** *****  
 **4**  
-  
Leviathan was a ruin. One hand had been lost at the wrist, and parts of his raw skeleton were exposed – a dark and slimy deep-sea blue. His tail was truncated, and three of his four eyes had been mauled out. It was a convincing impression of damage to the puppet.  
  
It was on the new coastline, hemmed in by force fields and brutes. Where the beach had ruptured into Downtown, collapsed buildings formed a patchy seawall and water was quickly filling the scar where it reached the sea.  
  
Alex was down to three fingers and a thumb on his right hand. But he kept hold of the Triumvirate. Eidolon’s ability allowed him to detach body parts physically while feeling like they were still in perfect continuity with his body, and for the last ten minutes it had allowed him to perfectly circumvent his range limit. Alexandria's strength allowed him to grip onto their costumes firmly.  
  
His thumb was with Skitter, back in the medical bay, and his left pinky was firmly hooked onto Flechette's quiver. Tattletale hadn't been locatable, wherever she had tumbled from the rooftop. Perhaps she had been located and was in the medical bay, as with canon. Maybe the longer fight had stopped S&R from picking her up and she was dead. His final pinky had gone to Narwhal, the powerful force field manipulator from Canada. He would have preferred Labyrinth if he could've found her but, barring a dimensional cape, a second trigger might do. A power with reduced limits and versatility.  
  
Right now it hardly mattered, with his mind fizzing and his eyesight as sharp as Legend’s, every cape on the battlefield was being boosted, their powers almost three times ‘stronger’ than usual – though that meant different things to different capes.  
  
He used the short pause to examine the capes closest to him. One had power over ice, perhaps she was Rime, and the other momentum — an older guy, he definitely wasn’t Grace. One cape could build tech of some description, which was pretty much useless to Alex, while the final cape was a grabbag, like Flechette, but less useful. He took in their costumes, the parts of their faces they left exposed, the worry lines that tightened their mouths. It was still harder than it ought to be to take them as people, and not performers. They weren’t disposable, any more than Alex was. He had to be careful not to just categorise them by their powers alone.  
  
Leviathan's head flickered and twitched. Where Scion had struck him, a very faint golden glow gradually burned away more and more flesh.  
  
Something he didn't recognise passed amongst the experienced parahumans because the Triumvirate shot outwards, Alexandria flying at Leviathan, while the other two shot up diagonally into the air.  
  
Sixty lasers burst from Legend, each as thick as a car was tall. They wound around Alexandria, striking Leviathan at the same moment she hit its centre-mass like a cruise missile. Eidolon kept him pinned. A crackling green light was caught around his feet and what little tail remained while small pits of distortion popped and disappeared all over his body, nibbling deep cavities into his body at random.  
  
Picking up Fenja's oversized spear, fished from the waters earlier, Alex shot forward as light. Whatever had happened to bring him here, and put him on this level of ability, he had no doubts that it had been to kill a monster like Leviathan. He had the knowledge, and now he had been given the tools, too. Sting's energy filled the double-bladed spear, the edge looking keener and more solid. He had thought it would look more peculiar and mind-bending, but he supposed he was remembering Scion's perspective on it.  
  
Leviathan swatted at Alexandria, lightning-fast, but she braced and captured the arm in the air. Falling like a wrestler, she bent him backwards over himself in a way that was suitably inhuman and should have torn him in half at the middle. She had seen him coming. He slashed the edge of the blade and it cut through Leviathan and the water pouring off him like a sponge. Without Fenja's breaker state, big as it was, it wasn't enough to hemisect Leviathan.  
  
Leviathan was having none of it. The endbringers were happy to take blows they knew didn’t matter, but with one of the few powers that could harm it, it wasn’t willing to pretend it was stuck. With a horrendous amount of force, it ripped its feet from Eidolon's hold, leaving tremendous volumes of surface flesh behind, its great wounds dripping with ichor. It spun and a great curtain of water, tons, span out behind it. Alex turned to fog with the spear, the water forcing him backwards. He was well away from the scaly claw that burst through the water at him a moment later. He reformed and flew towards its arm. With tiny diamond shaped forcefields, he cut into its armpit and built something that was half sling, half shelter from the water pouring down. With a cry the spear forced itself in, to the hilt, and then he dragged it down the chest wall before flying backwards.  
  
"Tidal wave!" someone cried.  
  
He felt a force on one of his fingers as Eidolon accelerated suddenly and tightened his hold, the cape flying towards the tidal wave.  
  
He focused on Leviathan. Alex didn't have Legend's dexterity but did what he could, firing out two off-time laser beams to catch Leviathan mid-stride, and constructing force-fields behind his ankle for him to fall over. At Leviathan's head he fired a great burst of air, a hurricane in miniature, and felt that power diminish. It did its job though, once he had fallen, Legend and Alexandria took over pinning him down, their blows stronger than Alex’s and perfectly timed. Alex flew in, and under the other armpit he drove the spear in as far as he could, twisting it and then wrenching it downward, through where the ribs would be on a human.  
  
It did a lot of damage, but it didn't kill him. Well, Tattletale said she wasn’t always right. He had either missed it, or the core was in a different part of the skeleton. In a moment he was at Leviathan's hip, the monster still struggling. He was much thinner in the lower half and with three quick slashes he had cut through to the centre of his leg, flicking the blade as he pulled back he felt the first sense of resistance, for a moment, before it was through and the limb hung. Leviathan stopped jobbing, in any sense.  
  
The water pouring off him formed into whips, striking out at anyone within 20 metres and curling around Alexandria's neck, wrenching her free. Flechette's sense of timing saved him from anything similar. As each whip headed to him, he cut through them with the flat of the blade and watched them collapse into spray. It appeared that cutting through the whips was only an effective strategy for Sting, however. Where Legend blasted the whips they carried on without any support from the trunk, chasing after him. They struck at forcefields making gaps and then flicking through, stretching out where they were cut off from Leviathan's echo.  
  
Flying back to the front line, Alex joined Flechette in combating the tendrils. It took less than a dozen seconds to get them all, her power told him, but Leviathan had managed to kill nearly half the capes who were still arrayed against him. With the distraction, scuttling like a lizard on three limbs, the endbringer made it to the sea. His upper half stood again, turned to face them, head just above the waves. Its one remaining green eye focused on Alex, the head still, its flickering movements stopped for the first time he had seen.  
  
Alex gripped the spear tightly with his right hand, the amputated palm of his left resting against the main haft. If he didn't know where the core was, then he would just have to dice Leviathan like an onion until the cubes stopped moving. He hefted the spear again, and Leviathan turned his back on the city. Uncharacteristically slowly he began to swim away from the city sinking into the sea. Leaving.  
  
That bastard. But there was no way Alex could follow him and chase him down. Even with the triumvirate's powers, once Leviathan was underwater he'd be uncatchable.  
  
He calculated a trajectory, angles and timings pointing themselves out to him, filled the whole spear with sting's energy and threw. It flew like a thunderbolt from Zeus and entered the water just behind where Leviathan had dipped his head under the water. There was nothing to say if it had hit, no reaction or explosion. Just silence. And then the Endbringer battle was over.  
  
Eidolon flew towards the coast and in the distance the tidal wave — Leviathan's parting gift — submerged back into the ocean, ratcheting down like it was on a rusty trolly jack. When he landed he gave the nod to all of the assembled capes. Capes knelt where they stood, or turned, or flew into the air. Tension not so much as leaving them but changing quality, turning into a different weight.  
  
With the battle over, there was a space forming around Alex. People were drawing back from him, rapidly leaving him standing on his own. Bright splashes of colour on spandex were face down on rubble, or bleeding into the water, but turning to walk to them Eidolon landed softly in front of him, hand out to stop him.  
  
"I'm a doctor," he said, "I can help."  
  
Something had changed in Eidolon. The power that he could _feel_ , like they occupied a socket in his body, the only one that explained itself, began to feel fuzzy. It slipped away entirely and suddenly his fingers were back on his hands, completely whole. Legend hovered next to Eidolon, not far from Alex, but Alexandria was high in the sky and climbing. He could see her until she reached the cloud cover. Huh, the rain was stopping, becoming a drizzle and then faint spotting over the course of a few seconds.  
  
The loss of her enhanced cognition and Skitter's multi-tasking all at once felt like being hit in the head by a dozen rubber bands at once, each of them carrying a shot of tequila. He couldn’t maintain the auras, and they all slipped from his grasp in an instant, diminishing to normal over the course of a few seconds.  
  
Even without Alexandria’s powers, Alex didn't have to be a genius to imagine what Eidolon was feeling on being weaker again with his crossed arms and tightly clenched fists.  
  
Legend stepped forward, "The help you provided against Leviathan was invaluable just now. But I need you to stay here and not use any powers, while we tally and figure out where we stand with all of this." Legend gestured at the ruined coastline and smashed buildings, "Give us some time to co-ordinate and we can find something for you to do." He looked over at the fallen capes nearest to us and sighed, "I'm not sure there's much even parahuman healers can do for these poor souls. Can you do that? Wait here, hero?"  
  
His voice was a rich and earnest baritone, and it was reassuring and kind, trained speaker or not. Alex gave him a nod, and sat on the rubble. Legend flew into the cloud bank in an instant and suddenly his vision was terrible, or relatively non-superhuman at least. Capes who could fly began to head out at a more sedate pace, picking up the less injured. Teleporters began to arrive with people in what, Alex guessed, must have been the local paramedic uniform. He watched as the water drained around him, from the city into the sea. He watched as bodies were slowly arranged and wrapped like oversized freight packages. Ready for collection at a later date.  
  
"Eidolon," he called out.  
  
Eidolon had remained where he was, looking out at the sea and the receding wave. His green cape was slick with muck, half-brown, and trailed in the water that reached to his ankles. He didn't turn, didn't say a word.  
  
"Eidolon," Alex called again, "I know things that you need to know. But I don't exactly want to shout them out."  
  
The powerful cape turned to him. More a mask more than a helmet really, of glass or crystal, his face was a dark shadow amongst a bright green glow that shone through his mask. Like looking at someone through frosted glass, his features were unseeable, a moving almost-silhouette. Eidolon said nothing, but Alex had his attention.  
  
"Come on, pretty much every answer you want to know, in fact, right here. I know how to make you stronger, permanently. And where the Endbringers come from, actually. I know you're a genuinely good man who has had to make hard choices to try and maximise how many people you can save. I know who the Siberian is and who the Contessa is. Erm, what else, I can tell you how the Enemy would beat you, personally, and I can tell you at least one strategy that could beat the Enemy by using an army of capes. As long as two particular capes are alive, at least. I just need you to tell me what's going to happen to me, and get me in touch with Doctor Mother somewhere private."  
  
A powerful man, yes. A subtle one, no. Eidolon jerked like he was being punched as Alex spoke.  
  
" _Could beat the Enemy?_ " he asked. His voice was odd, now that I heard him properly. Not robotic but distorted, and as if it was three people saying the same thing, heard after their voices echoed around some corners.  
  
"You know who I'm talking about. The silver one's partner. The flesh garden. The entities."  
  
"Scion's dead," said Eidolon, and there was a twitchy energy about him like he expected Leviathan to pop back up at any second. " _You_ killed him before he could drive Leviathan from the city, twenty minutes ago."

  
***** *****


End file.
